


These lies, they kill

by whenineternal



Series: Keratras Stories [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Interrogation, M/M, Mental Instability, Minor Character Death, Psychological Torture, Reconciliation, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Torture, Violence, family bonds, it is not very excplicit, tags are warnings, use of needles for medical reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-04-23 22:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19160719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whenineternal/pseuds/whenineternal
Summary: Doyoung doesn’t know what he will do once he reaches the capital. He only knows he needs to eradicate any threat towards Jaehyun, rid them from the world like the cancer they are.





	1. Invasion

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! For all my old readers, the sequel is finally here!!!! For any new readers, this is a direct sequel to "Like a solarflare around your neck", it is essential to read that before touching this! https://archiveofourown.org/works/8690695/chapters/19923952
> 
> Also, do mind the tags, but know it's not as violent as they make it sound! I promise!  
> I hope everyone enjoys this, or at least one person enjoys this, my baby...and please, let me know what you think. comments give me good skin, kudos clean the air<3

Doyoung stands at the end of the path, where earth and dust mingle with stone, and looks out at the tumultuous sea crashing with the sound of thunder over the pebbled beach. The wind tears at his hair and stings his eyes, but he stands fast, rooted to the uneven ground.

He hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone after he came back, and secluding himself in the wild nature surrounding Hansol’s cabin home was the best idea he had. The dismal weather is a fitting companion to his thoughts, slowly stirring it’s gloomy surface into a raging tempest.

Even when the rain whips at his face like tiny needle points to his skin, he stands in silence, only closing his eyes to the raging storm outside. He doesn’t deserve the comfort of shelter, of a warm hearth and home. He doesn’t deserve the consoling look in Hansol’s big, round eyes or the sympathetic smile in the corner of Johnny’s mouth or the worry etched in Mark’s brow. He will stand here, lashed by the rain and beaten by the strong winds, until nature gives and leaves him alone. That’s what he deserves.

His whispers of apologies are blown away before they reach his own ears and his palms ache where his nails have made crescent marks in the skin. How could he leave Jaehyun like that? He may as well have locked him in a snake pit and thrown away the key. Even taking Jaehyun there, to the heart of a resistance against his very name, was a giant mistake. More than that it was a betrayal.  

 _For the good of the people_ , is what they say. _Fighting for those who have been stripped of their voice, cast aside and forgotten._ Those were Heechul’s exact words to him on the day he was recruited. At the time he thought he was doing the right thing, that he was finally making something good of himself, but it hadn’t taken him long to realise he had merely settled for the lesser evil. The _PPP_ still wanted him to do the same kind of dirty, underhand missions that would leave him seeing blood on his hands even when they were clean. The people were different, but their methods weren’t that far apart.

It must be impossible, was the conclusion he came to, to remain good and just when you are fighting every day against the evil and unjust.

Jaehyun submitted himself to their will, but Doyoung doesn’t doubt they will turn on him in the end. He has seen enough of humanity to not hold to optimism.

 

“Doyoung?” a young voice says from behind him, loud enough to be heard over the wind but still tentative and unobtrusive. He keeps his back to him, hoping that Mark will leave when he’s not acknowledged, but minutes later Doyoung can still feel his presence behind him.

“Yes?” he says, as if the lengthy silence between them never happened. He turns his head slightly to look over his shoulder and finds a young boy clinging to the polished wood handle of his umbrella, one foot tapping a rapid rhythm into the soggy ground. It makes him turn fully so the wind hits him in the back and drives him forward, because the Mark standing in front of him is not the Mark from earlier that day.

“What is it?!” he asks, slightly panicked. For a second he is sure something has happened to Jaehyun, already.

“Um,” Mark begins, blinking rapidly and clearing his throat a little. “I just wondered.”

It takes Mark another few moments to word what’s on his mind, and Doyoung takes deep breaths and feels his heart calm down from its hard beating in his chest as he realises this isn’t about Jaehyun.

“I wondered if you saw Donghyuk,” Mark says at last, raising his head to finally look him in the eye. He looks so hopeful, and so young, Doyoung doesn’t want to let him down. He wishes he could tell Mark his brother was alright, that he could give him solid proof of it, if only to avoid wiping that tentative smile off his face.

In the end he doesn’t have to say anything as his silence speaks for him and Mark’s face falls minutely. Nothing like the crestfallen look he was expecting, but he realises then that Mark has very little hope to be taken away. He doesn’t truly believe he will ever see his brother again.

Doyoung knows how that feels. He had a brother once, in a time so far off it feels like a different life. When he was younger he used to dream about Gongmyung coming back for him, to save him from the horrible reality of his life. Taeyong probably became that saviour he was envisioning when he took him in from the streets of the Ark and gave him clothes that didn’t chafe his skin, and food that didn’t leave him aching for more.

“If you listen to the sea on a windy day, you’ll hear the entirety of nature’s sounds,” Mark says, startling Doyoung out of his private thoughts.

“At least that’s what my dad says,” he adds with a small embarrassed laugh. He touches his hand to the back of his head in a very classic good-guy move. It makes Doyoung smile.

“I find your father to be rarely wrong,” he says, turning slowly and taking a step back so that they are standing shoulder to shoulder in the worsening storm.

“Why don’t you ask him about Donghyuk?” he asks. Mark leans closer to fit them both under his umbrella, tilting it against the wind and restricting Doyoung’s view of the wild sea. He doesn’t say anything for a long while and Doyoung sighs into the silence, his thoughts drifting once again.

“Because he’s rarely wrong,” Mark says, suddenly in a rush.

“Are you coming back?” he asks, already turning towards the cabin. Doyoung shakes his head and steps out of the cover of Mark’s umbrella, absentmindedly waving him off.

He guesses that’s exactly the reason why he is avoiding everyone. Johnny is rarely wrong and seeing any sort of sympathy on his expressive face would probably break him.

Doyoung has lived his life in stages, each marked by the death of a precious person, and the fear of it happening all over again sits like ice in his bones. Gongmyung was the saviour of his dreams, Taeyong the saviour of his life, but Jaehyun.

Jaehyun saved his soul.

And he can’t bare the thought of losing him.

 

The cabin is silent as the grave when he returns, an untold amount of time since Mark left him on the rocky shore. Johnny is sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, his body silhouetted by the orange flames. He sits perfectly still and Doyoung walks silently past him to the little library in the corner where Hansol is leafing through an old tome while keeping a close eye on Johnny.

“Do you remember this?” he whispers when Doyoung gets close. Doyoung furrows his brow and lowers his eyes to the dark brown cover of the book when Hansol shows it to him. It’s centuries old, the title is written in old Curug letters that Doyoung needs a few seconds to interpret, but he recognises the book at once. It’s the one he carried with him a decade ago when he set out from Gried to find a cure for his people. His brother gave it to him, hoping it would help him in his self-appointed quest.

“The Sovereign Saga of Curug Tam, written by the last Gyðja* of the first religion. A holy book.” Doyoung ghosts his hand over the fragile spine, feeling the brittle leather under his fingertips.

“Gongmyung gave it to me, for safekeeping I know now. He didn’t want our culture to die out even if our people did.”

He had left it with Hansol when they parted ways on right here on Runtah. When Hansol had finally found Johnny, with Mark in tow, and the very concept of reunion was too much for Doyoung to bare.

“I’m sorry I left,” he whispers, his hands retreating into the sleeves of his jacket. It’s one thing he can apologise for, one that Hansol deserves from _him._

“Why did you?” Hansol whispers back, his eyes running over the tome in his hands like a caress. Doyoung takes a deep breath and can’t help stealing a glance at the still figure in the armchair. He decides to be honest.

“I was jealous,” he says simply. Hansol’s eyes meet his with surprise written in them, but it only takes a second for them to soften as he understands why.

“There is still ho-,” “No there isn’t,” Doyoung interrupts, giving the old tome one last look before turning away from it. Hope is not something he allows himself.

“I wish you had stayed,” Hansol says and Doyoung feels a shiver of warmth down his spine at the soft tone of his voice. It almost sounds like how Hansol _used to_ talk to him.

“Thank you,” he whispers, grateful for the sentiment, and sometimes he wishes he had stayed as well. But then he would have never met Jaehyun. Everything has been worth it for the time he got to spend with him.

A choking sound draws their attention to the armchair across the room. Johnny is leant over the armrest of the plush chair, seemingly in the middle of pushing himself to his feet when something caused him to stumble. Hansol gasps when he topples over and pushes the heavy tome into Doyoung’s hands before he rushes over the floor. He falls to his knees beside Johnny’s long form and wraps his arms around him, pulling his upper body onto his thighs.

Johnny’s unseeing eyes are wide open, and his body is trembling all over. It looks like he’s having a seizure and he can tell from the panicked look on Hansol’s face that this has never happened before.

He keeps his distance, nervously clutching the heavy book to his chest as Hansol does all he can to help Johnny. The feeling of foreboding rushes over him with such strength he feels it vibrating in his bones and he must have blacked out for a second as the next thing he knows he is slumped over on the floor and the book lies open, face down, in front of him. The impact of hitting the floor has ripped the fragile cover in three pieces. He gathers the pieces together and holds them carefully in his hands as he crawls as best he can to the two Panacea huddled together on the floor.

They enclose Johnny’s trembling body, holding him gently to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself as whatever it is that is wracking his body runs its course. Mark joins them at some point, his sounds of distress passing through Doyoung’s head as he stares transfixed at Johnny’s milky eyes and imagines he can see the entire universe in their depths.

Doyoung can’t say how long they sat like that, only that it was long enough for the healing energy Hansol had been constantly sending through Johnny to grow large enough to encompass all of them. He can’t tell if it worked on Johnny, but the tranquil warmth of Hansol’s presence has helped calm his racing heart and it is only then he recognises the labored way his breath passes through his lungs.

“Dad?” Mark sobs, gripping Johnny’s cold hand in both of his. The trembling has ceased, only to be replaced by an eerie stillness that is even worse. Then Johnny gasps for air and life returns to his face, the sickly pallor of his skin receding.

His hands regain strength and clings to Mark’s; a silent reassurance that he is alright and Mark slumps in relief, toppling sideways. Doyoung offers his shoulder for support.

“Johnny?” Hansol’s soft voice breaks the solemn silence. “What did you see?”

Doyoung counts the seconds until Johnny finally speaks and when he does, sudden like lightning the terrible feeling of dread returns.

“Death.”

 

*

* * *

*

 

He has only one cold bullet left. That won’t get him very far, and neither will the meagre weapons supply he finds in Mark’s garage. But they might get him far enough.

Hansol’s twin blades, slim and delicately crafted, lies pillowed in an open wooden box, a thick layer of dust covering them. They won’t do him any good. On the wall hangs an assortment of knives as long as the length from his elbow to his fingertips and he chooses two at random and hangs them on his belt. He wraps his thick cloak around himself, shivering as if he can already feel the cold of the Taranjian frost. It has never bothered him before, but when the cold comes from within, even his thick skin can’t dispel it.

“You need to be on your guard if you’re going to go in there,” Hansol’s voice startles him out of his melancholia and Doyoung is surprised to find him standing right next to him. He hadn’t even heard him come in. Hansol is dressed similarly to him and Doyoung watches confused as he gently lifts the beautiful swords out of their box one by one, wiping the thick coat of dust carefully from the blade with the end of his cloak.

“I’m not letting you go off alone,” Hansol says as he fits the scabbard to his back and slides the swords inside. He remembers those swords, and how proficient Hansol is with them. Years of running from abuse and exploitation has forced the skill on him, but Doyoung remembers even better the relief that was so prevalent in Hansol’s face the day he put his weapons down.

“I’m coming with you.”

Doyoung feels some of the cold seep out of him, but he can’t say if it’s simply from Hansol’s words or something more. He makes an attempt at protesting, but Hansol shuts him down without a word, simply walking back out of the small storage room with his cloak flying dramatically around his legs. It brings a smile to Doyoung’s mouth as it reminds him of the time he spent in Hansol’s hut on Curug Tam and Hansol would wear layers upon layers of clothes that would fly around him when he moved as if they were alive. He suspects Hansol does it on purpose to satisfy his flair for the dramatic.

Doyoung searches the room one more time for any kind of gun or ammunition, but gives up with a sigh when he doesn’t find anything this time either. He isn’t too skilled with blades and has never been a fan of the far more personal way of killing, much preferring the distance a raygun puts between him and his opponent.

He exits the storage room to find Johnny and Mark with Hansol, talking in hushed whispers together. Mark is supporting his father’s weight, though Johnny doesn’t look like he really needs it. They all look at him in unison and grow silent the second he joins them.

Johnny is clutching something in both hands and he holds it up when Doyoung comes close enough. It’s a shirt, black and dirty and slightly torn in places and Doyoung quickly recognises it as the shirt Jaehyun had been wearing since they left Seni Rupa.

“I’ve been trying to see more, to see him, but there is nothing. Everything is just white and sort of dissonant, like some kind of static interference,” he says, pushing the shirt at Doyoung. Doyoung touches it and understands what Johnny means. It’s like watching a malfunctioned screen, or a page where the ink has bled and made everything indecipherable.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what this means.”

Johnny looks lost for more than just words, the forlorn look on his face speaking of confusion and frustration and Doyoung feels sympathy for him even if he cannot begin to imagine what this is like for him.

“It’s alright, we’ll find out,” Hansol says quietly and he touches his forehead to Johnny’s and gently ruffles Mark’s hair and Doyoung knows it’s time for them to leave. He kind of wishes Johnny would come with them, finding Jaehyun would be so much simpler with someone who can see the future.

“I fear I would be no help to you Doyoung,” Johnny says in that way he does, like he already knows exactly what he’s going to ask. He probably does.

“Come back soon, okay,” Mark says, looking at Hansol. “You still have to teach me all the healing stuff.” He tries to smile, but Doyoung can tell he is worried and for good reason. They don’t know what they are walking into. The possibility is there that they won’t even make it to Taranjà.

“There is nothing I can teach you that you won’t come to learn on your own,” Hansol stops abruptly as Mark’s whole face scrunches and he reaches out to ruffle the young boy’s hair once more.

“I won’t be long,” he whispers.

They climb into the spaceship one after the other, and then, only hours after he returned, Doyoung is flying off into possible danger once again. He doesn’t know what they will do once they get there. He only knows he needs to eradicate any threat towards Jaehyun, rid them from the world like the cancer they are.

 

*

* * *

*

 

It takes them less than five seconds to get a grasp on the situation once they drop out of hyperspace. They are hovering just outside the gravity field of Taranjà’s largest moon, directly above the enormous spaceship that nearly blots out the view of the planet below.

“Oh no,” Hansol breathes, his hands clenching around the edge of the control board.

“It’s the _Intergalactic Council_ ,” he says with such intense loathing it takes Doyoung off guard. He is sure Hansol is right, there is no one else it could possibly be, and while he has very little knowledge of them he knows they are bad news.

“Why would they be here now? The terms of the peace treaty was that they never returned to Keratras.”

“Sure, but the Jung family is all but extinct now. There is no one to enforce the treaty,” Hansol says as he tilts the ship sideways and flies them around the monstrosity so they can head for the planet surface.

“But how would they know that?” he wonders, eyes glued to the sleek, but bulky design of the large vessel. It’s unlike anything he has ever seen before, and its sheer size has left him gobsmacked.

“If they can build a ship like that, you don’t think they can know what’s been going on?” Hansol reasons, just as the ship jumps a little as it enters the planet's atmosphere. Doyoung hums distractedly as a black smudge on the surface grows more and more distinct the closer they get. What he had previously thought to be the grey and blue city landscape, he sees now is merely the charred remains of it, stretching like an open wound spewing black smoke into the air. He tries to liken the damage he had seen on the news segment in Seni Rupa to this total destruction, but it cannot be compared. The _Council_ must have shot indiscriminately at the Capital from space, with no regard for life of any kind. It’s the only way they could have achieved such widespread destruction.

“This is horrible,” Hansol’s voice shakes him out of his stupor, to a ringing in his ears and for a few seconds his vision blurs.

“No wonder Johnny was so affected. So many deaths in the blink of an eye.”

Doyoung can only hum as Hansol’s throaty voice barely penetrates the haze that has fallen over his mind. Jaehyun is down there. In the rubble and ashes, with death all around him. That’s not a place for Jaehyun to be, he doesn’t belong there, his light and purity cannot be contaminated by this, he won’t allow it. He doesn’t realise he has said Jaehyun’s name out loud until Hansol turns to look at him with his face set in a determined mien.

“We will find him Doyoung, we won’t leave without him,” Hansol says, but Doyoung notices how he doesn’t specify that they will find Jaehyun alive.

“Is there a point in going?” he asks, wincing at how desolate his voice sounds. He hopes Hansol will understand what he meant to say, because he couldn’t get the words out to ask if he believes Jaehyun can still be alive. Hansol reaches for his hand over the back of the seat and once Doyoung grasps it in his he can feel the warmth coming over him like a comforting blanket.

“Death is always certain, Doyoung. Johnny has taught me that,” he says and Doyoung wants to ask him what that is supposed to mean, but Hansol is forced to turn back around to take them safely to the ground. He thinks back to before they left, to Johnny’s confusion and the distorted image he had shown him and wonders what it all means.

Is Jaehyun still alive? Is he alright and walking somewhere down in the carnage? Or, more likely, is he lying somewhere, half dead and merely clinging to life?

Hansol flies them towards the royal palace and even from a distance Doyoung can tell it is mostly wrecked. The main hall, where Jaehyun most likely was at the time of the attack, is a crumbled heap of stone and metal. The formerly egg-white exterior is sooty black and some of the metal beams are still glowing red and melting.

“He’s under there, isn’t he?” Doyoung breathes, all hope leaving him in one fell swoop. No one could have survived getting trapped under that.

“You don’t know that,” Hansol tries to reassure him, “maybe they didn’t get that far, or maybe they were already done with what they were doing and had gotten out.”

It’s only empty words to Doyoung’s anguished heart. The feelings that coursed through him when Jaehyun told him they were over is nothing compared to the heavy weight of absolute helplessness he feels now that he is certain they are truly over for good. In the absolute worst way possible. His heart seems to simultaneously jump into his throat and fall to his stomach as breathing becomes difficult and his chest aches terribly. He barely notices the bumping and jerking as Hansol hurries to set the ship down, and the last thing he sees before his vision goes dark is Hansol’s worried face and his lips moving as he calls his name.

 

He comes to when the sky is dark, the day long over and the only thing lighting up the city around them is Hansol’s soft glow and the metal beams slowly melting above them in the distance.

“What happened?” he wheezes, feeling his throat constrict painfully at the considerable strain it takes to get the words out.

“You had a relapse,” Hansol speaks quietly, leaning close so he won’t miss it. “Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?”

Doyoung only shrugs for now, afraid if he tries to talk again something might go terribly wrong. Honestly, he hadn’t paid it much mind. He noticed the symptoms a couple times, but his mind was always stuck on more important things so he always forgot with the next blink of his eyes.

“You should be fine for now, but it’s getting worse. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to help you,” Hansol says and Doyoung closes his eyes when the other runs a warm hand through his hair. Hansol used to do that to him all the time years ago, and Doyoung can tell by the fact that he did it now that Hansol feels bad about his inability to cure him. Doyoung grabs his hand and squeezes it tightly, trying to convey without words that it’s not his fault at all. There is only one person responsible for Doyoung’s sickness, and he is no longer around for him to extract his vengeance upon. Two years he walked on tiptoes around the man, resisting every impulse in his body to slit the king’s throat and be done with it. That would have been one kill he would never regret. If he had still been with the _Libertas_ he would probably have been given the honour of doing the deed.

“Doyoung?” Hansol prompts, gently shaking his shoulder. Doyoung blinks rapidly and turns his head up to the other.

“Thinking about Jaehyun?” Hansol asks and Doyoung nods his head after a moment’s consideration. Better that, than for Hansol to know what he had really been thinking about. He isn’t sure the pacifist in Hansol would understand even this.

“We’ll find him,” Hansol reassures and rises to his feet. He holds a hand out for Doyoung and helps him to his feet once Doyoung takes it. His throat is still constricting painfully, making it difficult to breathe, and Doyoung hopes Hansol doesn’t notice it when he nods and puts on a fake smile in place of a vocal response. He doesn’t want to experience the pain talking gave him ever again.

“I set down not far from the palace, there is an open area just ahead that should be easy enough to cross and then we need to find a way inside,” Hansol pulls him along by the hand while he talks and sure enough, as they round the corner of a dilapidated house the cityscape opens in front of them to a wide empty space. Only a few brittle trees occupy the gravel field, as broken and miserable as everything else they’ve seen of the Capital so far.

They move quickly across, sure they won’t be seen in the pitch dark, but in a hurry not to risk it anyway.

“Wait,” Hansol hisses, halting his movements with an arm across his chest. He looks at Hansol while the other stares far ahead in the darkness, narrowing his eyes at something only he can see. Doyoung raises an eyebrow at him when Hansol relaxes and turns to meet his eyes.

“I thought I saw someone, they had a strange silhouette like an animal walking on two legs, but they disappeared so quickly I can’t be sure,” he whispers, his face pinching a little as he tries to explain what he saw. Doyoung figures he must have seen a soldier wearing some kind of armour and is a little reluctant to continue forward. The palace walls are just ahead of them though, and if he looks up, he can see the bare shimmer of the bridge above them, it’s damaged plasma field flickering in the night. He can’t afford to turn back now, if worst comes to worst he’ll fight his way through anyone that stands in his way.

He jerks his head in the direction forward and takes Hansol’s elbow to guide him along, though he trips a second later on a particularly large piece of gravel and is forced to use that hold to keep himself aloft.

“Sorry,” he wheezes, wincing when it still hurts and then he winces again when he swallows hard and that hurts even more. He lifts a hand to feel for swelling around his throat but finds nothing. With no prior experience with this, he can’t say what is going on and the fear nags at the back of his mind that it’s not going to go away.

With Hansol leading the way they make it with no more stumbles to the palace walls, still standing tall even at half their size. They climb over the rubble cluttering a big hole in the wall and find themselves in between the library, and a little further to their left, the familiar servant quarters where Doyoung lived for the last two years. Across the courtyard, almost immediately in front of them, is nothing but a pile of stone and metal of what was the King’s House, a lavish throne room sitting on top of the largest mainframe ever built. Of course it has been levelled to the ground. Without the AI, Taranjà has no defense. Somehow the _Council_ must have known that.

“Is there anything you know that they may have had to protect themselves against something like this?” Hansol asks hesitantly. Doyoung can tell from the tone of his voice that he is no longer as sure that they will be able to find Jaehyun in all this, and he isn’t surprised. It looks even worse up close than it did from the air.

He starts to shake his head, but stops as a thought occurs to him. The PPP did always have something. He had always thought it was the extent of their militia, but obviously he had been wrong. One of their founding members, a scientist going only by the nickname Moon amongst their circles, had created something very much like a miniature plasma field that could be used as a shield in dire circumstances. Last he knew it wasn’t distributed to just anyone though, and the chances of anyone on Jaehyun’s team carrying one would have been very slim.

“There is something?” Hansol prompts and Doyoung shrugs his shoulders.

“Maybe,” he whispers and is relieved when he finds it doesn’t hurt _as much_ this time. He can feel Hansol’s eyes on him, like a hot poker to the side of his face, but he ignores him in favour of making his way over the charred pieces of stone to the entrance of the servant quarters. Miraculously, the door is still on its hinges and it opens easily when Doyoung pulls on the handle. The AI must really be dead, he thinks, as the inside of the building is as pitch black as the outside and there is no warm, computerised voice welcoming him inside. He draws a knife from his belt and holds it up in front of himself as he crosses the threshold as quiet as he can.

“Maybe I should go first,” Hansol says, a tone of amusement in his hushed voice. Doyoung pulls a face, but steps aside to let him pass. Hansol stops right in front of him and takes his wrist in one hand, adjusting his grip on the handle of the knife.

“Don’t grip it so tightly, give the handle room to move in your hand,” he says as he guides Doyoung’s arm in a slow motion. “If you’re struck by another blade, move with it, allow each attack to slide off your sword instead of bluntly taking the hit. You want to deflect it, not block it.”

Doyoung hums to show he understood, and Hansol lets him go and sets off down the darkened corridor much faster than Doyoung had been, but slow enough for him to keep up. He guides Hansol from memory, directing him left and right and on a long detour when they find the staircases have caved in, all the while he sweeps his knife back and forth, attempting to perfect the move Hansol showed him. So caught up in his training, he doesn’t notice at first what is wrong when the sound of Hansol’s footsteps slow and eventually stops. When he raises his eyes he can’t see any more than he could before, but the air feels a little different, more like the buried stairwells than the wide, airy halls, and he steps around Hansol and reaches out with a trembling hand. He prays for it not to be until the moment his hand touches jagged stone; the hallway in front of them is collapsed, there is no way forward.

“Is there any other path we can take?” Hansol asks, his voice fading away as Doyoung is already shaking his head.

“It would be of no use, we’re already here,” he whispers, sagging against a wall. If Jaehyun had been in either the throne room or anywhere below it, he would have been right here, on the other side of the blockage, caught under an avalanche of stone. He tries to think of anywhere else Jaehyun may have been, any other targets the PPP would want to hit, but like they held themselves in their privacy, the Jung family built their palace to mirror that. By taking out the AI mainframe, they would have crippled the palace and all its adjoining buildings. There would be no need to hit anywhere else. Jaehyun is gone. Whatever Johnny thinks he saw doesn’t matter, his death is certain.

“You should go,” he whispers, slipping further down against the wall. He doesn’t notice it when the damaged stone cuts his skin as he falls slowly to the floor.

“Go home,” he slurs. His head is spinning and his tongue feels heavy in his mouth; a sour taste in the back of his throat makes him gag. A shiver wracks his body and then he goes still, feeling as if the gravity of this realisation has hollowed him out, sucked the air from his lungs and drained the blood from his veins. He feels cold.

Shapes move in front of his eyes, warmth touches his skin but doesn’t penetrate, a distant rumble of voices echoes around him and bright, white light burns his eyes so he thinks they may just fall from his head. And then there is nothing, nothing to see, nothing to hear and nothing to feel. And he has only his dreams to keep him company.

 

*

* * *

*

 

He wakes in a moonlit room. The beam of light falling through the window lays a perfect ninety degree angle on the floor, stretching out from the shadows. He reaches out with a hand until the moon spills over his fingertips and creates playful shadows on the blank, blue floor. His hand is smaller than it should be. It is a child’s hand.

As he looks around the rest of the room, he begins to notice things he hadn’t before. Like the bookcase set into the wall, scratched and faded from years of books being taken down from its shelves and put back again. It wasn’t always his, he thinks it belonged to his mother’s brother before he passed away. It was years before he was born.

There is an old rocking chair next to it, though this is well taken care of, shining in the bare light. It holds a place of fondness in his heart; it was his mother’s. There isn’t much else in the room except for the bed he is lying in. This was always the custom with his people. No one should hold more, or less, than anyone else. Even a little prince needs to share his toys with other children, his mother told him once when he was being greedy.

A knock on the door startles him out of his perusal of the pattern on his blanket. A voice sounds on the other side, but he can’t make out the words. Even so his body moves.

He rises so quickly the sheets and heavy blankets are tangled in his legs and he crashes painfully to the floor. Rubbing his upper arm and limping slightly, he pushes through the thin door and hurries as best he can after the woman who woke him. The halls are familiar, just as he remembers them, but every face of every person he passes is blurred out, as if his mind doesn’t know what to fill them with.

The woman leads him to a room not much unlike his own, a little bigger only, with a bigger bed and a bigger window to let in more of the pale moonlight. A boy, several years older than him, lies deathly still in the middle of the bed. Long hair the colour of rosewood is splayed over the pillows in a sweaty mess, and as he draws nearer he can hear the trembling breath passing over the boy’s dry lips. The woman speaks again, but he doesn’t need her to tell him what he is seeing. This isn’t the first time he has sat at his brother’s bedside, praying it won’t be the last.

He searches under the blankets for a hand to hold and cherishes the weak grip his squeezing fingers get in return. Unlike the others, his brother’s face is in perfect detail. The arch of his nose, the crescent curve of his eyes, the fullness of his lips. And the hollowness of his cheeks that seemed to have become a new, permanent fixture to his features.

“Hang on brother,” he hears whispered in his head like an echo, a plea and a prayer all the same. So many times he spoke those words, whispered them into his brother’s cold fingers, kissed them into his fever-warm brow. And he always listened.

 

The next time he wakes he is hot and uncomfortable, weighed down by heavy furs and woollen blankets and with a fire burning close to his face. Every pop of a cinder makes him flinch. His arms and legs are sluggish when he moves to get out of his binds, twisting and turning until he tires himself out. It is then that a pair of helping hands appear out of nowhere, relieving him of the suffocating nest piece by piece until he can breathe properly again. A cool palm covers his forehead, easing his fever and the wearisome ache in his bones.

“Hang on,” a quiet, soothing voice slithers through the haze in his mind. He can’t move his head to see the owner of the healing hands, and he imagines someone like warm red tea with a little honey, and a squeeze of orange. All things that he finds calming when his mind is troubled.

“My name is Hansol,” the voice says, sounding clearer with every word as his mind races to catch up.

“I found you half covered in snow. You were suffering from hypothermia, but you got lucky snickle snickle snickle twat,” his mind fills the gap with nonsensical words as the man’s voice fades to nothing.

There is a slight ache in his throat, like a contracting of the muscles, but even as he is made aware of it, it passes.

“ … was also something wrong with your lungs,” the voice sounds again, as if someone had turned the volume up from mute.

“I healed you, for now.”

Those words echo in his head, hitting the thick fog covering his senses with the resounding thump of a ball on a court. Healed, _healed you_ , I healed you _healed you_.  

This is what he needs, what he set out for, what he left his home and his brother for. He needs to go back, he has to hurry before it is too late. His brother is hanging on by a thread, clinging to life on sheer will alone. Now that he has found the cure like he knew he would, it is of utmost importance he brings it back with him, to save his people.

But as his mind runs a million miles, his body lies stagnant on the padded floor. He cannot force his will from his mind to his body, and he cannot for the life of him understand why.

When he eventually gets up off the floor, and get himself dressed in the warmest clothes Hansol had to offer him, and forces himself into the treacherous whitelands once more, it is a whole moon since he left the mountain. Hansol comes with him, as promised. On the condition that when his work is done he will be allowed to leave again, compensated with their silence, as he promised.

It was no good. The mountain was dead. A hollow image of what it used to be. Not a soul to find.

He was too late.

 

The third time he wakes, he longs for the suffocating warmth of Hansol’s cabin in the glacier glade. Anything to escape the heat that burns his skin and turns his insides to molten glass. The dirty cobblestone scorches his bare feet and bruises his legs blue and yellow the longer he sits slumped together on their uneven surface. He is shielded from the bustle of the street by a large, smelly dumpster, and the happy chatter of the marketplace is a comfort. He hopes it stays like that. He doesn’t think he can run anymore. His ankles ache from when he misstepped on the rough asphalt, his calves burn from exertion and his stomach is churning with nothing more to process.

A hush falls over the crowd outside the narrow alley he made his hiding place, an unnatural tension in the air that is neither happy nor excited. They will find him, there’s no doubt. He ran from them for hours, all through the night, for naught. Even as his mind is screaming at him to run, he is going on empty with no fuel to get his body going again. He never should have stopped. He should have continued on to the top and then to the surface, disappeared into the riddled wild. At least then he wouldn't die at the hands of monsters. Proper monsters.

“Hey you,” a playful voice says in his ear, startling him so he falls over. A man with a cheshire cat smile looms over him, purplish silver hair hanging over his shining eyes that ensnares him in their depths and pulls him in. He imagines he can see himself in those eyes, his past and his future in the specks of gold on the iris edge, his miserable present in the lake-green circle around his pupils. He wouldn't call them pretty eyes, but they were remarkable, such a prominent feature of this man’s allure.

He doesn’t remember anything else about Taeyong from that day, only the gleam in his eyes as he lead him past the gang of pirates that had been on his tail since sundown. He remembers them, their large, leather-clad bodies still haunts him, their weapon-calloused hands grasping him by his arms and anywhere they could reach left an itch on his skin he cannot get rid.

But he escaped with his dignity intact. He always did, he was lucky like that.

 

He wakes again, in the softest bed he has ever lain in. There is warm breath brushing over his collarbones and a hand is gripping tightly the material of his sleeping shirt at his back. He wakes slowly, treasuring the quiet as his eyes flutter open to Jaehyun’s sleeping face. Of all the mornings he has woken up to Jaehyun asleep at his side, he recognises this as the very first. The aftermath of their passionate declaration of feelings. He knew already then that he would do anything for this sheltered boy, this epitome of goodness, the last light in his slowly decaying heart.

He feels refreshed, almost born anew, simply from being in this memory, the very best he has. Of Jaehyun’s relaxed face on the pillow next to his, when he smacks his lips in a sluggish, sleepy way, and when he sighs lightly in his sleep. Jaehyun always sleeps the heaviest at dawn so he takes the chance and runs a finger down the side of his face, across his puckered lips and over his soft chin. His skin is silk-like, so smooth under his fingertip, so pale and unblemished. So lonely.

Jaehyun was always alone. He had his aides and his guards and his brilliant tutors, but he was always alone even with people all around him. He watched the young prince for so long, studied his walk and his slumped shoulders, the sigh ever-present in his words. He recognised the shadow that fell over his face when his father was near, whether in presence or in words, and knew the pain it brought Jaehyun to even think of him.

But he also noticed the gleam in his eyes when he was curled over a particularly good book, in a dark corner of the vast library. The small satisfied curve of his smile when he mastered something new. Jaehyun was often alone, but he wasn’t always lonely.

He saw once, the delight on his face when he looked up at the frozen flowers dripping on vines from the mountain overhang. And he deliberated many hours on the longing Jaehyun showed for the outside world.

He knew Jaehyun long before he should, had seen into his secret world from shadowed corners and from behind barriers of stone pillars. He always knew so much, and Jaehyun so little. He had always meant to rectify that. Eventually.

He meant to wake Jaehyun from his peaceful sleep and tell him everything there is to know about him, and maybe he would still be lucky and Jaehyun would grant him forgiveness and stay by his side. But he never dared. But he is dreaming, not remembering.

He runs his fingers through that thick auburn hair, draws markings on a soft cheek with the tip of a single finger, lays a kiss on a smooth brow, whispers air into a rounded ear, shakes a shoulder with the strength of his palm. Jaehyun doesn’t wake, won’t wake, cannot wake.

For he is dreaming, not remembering, and Jaehyun is dead even in his deepest thoughts.

 

*

* * *

*

 

He startles awake, cold and aching and attached to his body in a way his dream self had not been. He shoots upright and falls into Hansol’s arms, a jumble of words falling from his mouth. He is shaking, his breath trembling in his lungs and he can barely see. Hansol catches his face between his palms and the sturdiness of his hands allows Doyoung to focus. Slowly his vision returns, the blackness turning dotted turning hazy before clearing. He is still shaking, hard enough to make his knees rattle, but Hansol is patient, soothing the aggravation coursing through his body with gentle humming and warm hands stroking up and down his arms.

“What’s a snickle twat?” he asks when Doyoung is only mildly trembling in his arms. It makes no sense to him, but Hansol laughs it off, not expecting an answer.

“Doyoung, there is someone you should see,” Hansol tentatively says, gripping his arms a little tighter than he was before. Doyoung doesn’t miss the way his eyes flit to the other side of the room towards the light.

“Where are we?” he whispers. The damp of the room is slowly registering, along with the pungent smell of mercaptan, and as he focuses more on his surroundings he realises the high-pitched tone he thought was in his head is being broadcast all around the small room they are in.

“Never mind, we’re in a jail cell. How did we get caught?”

He recognises the torment tactic from his mother’s reign, the attack on the senses designed to break the prisoner’s will to resist. Someone must have studied Curug customs intently to replicate it so perfectly.

“You fainted,” Hansol murmurs and runs his hands carefully over Doyoung’s head, checking for any bumps he may have missed before.

“There is someone you should see,” he repeats in an even quieter voice and when he guides Doyoung’s eyes to the other side of the four by four room, he finally takes notice of the group of people huddled together near the far corner, their faces turned towards the dim light. He doesn’t recognise any of them, covered in grime and hair matted over their faces, weighed down with both dirt and blood. But when one of them turns slightly towards them and the white light from the hallway outside the bars glints on a golden lapel pin, he suddenly knows exactly who is sharing the cell with them.

“Seulgi,” he calls out, his breath shuddering in his chest when the woman turns to him, her pale face amongst the shadows like the moon in a clouded sky. She is leant against the wall and moves towards him at the sound of his voice, favouring her right leg heavily.

“Doyoung,” she rasps and he wonders if she has suffered some damage to her trachea.

“What happened?” he asks her. He takes her hands to steady her when her right knee falters. Their exchange seems to have caught the attention of the others as one by one they move from the triangle of light slipping through the bars to crowd around them.

“The Intergalactic Council,” an unfamiliar, faint voice says, “they shot at the Capital from space. The cowards.”

“Captain please,” Seulgi whispers, holding a hand to her chest. She sinks gratefully onto the bench next to him, laying a hand on his knee. Doyoung allows the touch, if only because the strong woman he once knew now looks beaten down and resigned.

“It’s true,” she says after a moment, her voice a little steadier as she speaks softly. “We, the council, had barely made it out of the palace when they started shooting at the city. Indiscriminately, raining fire down on us all, everywhere, without regard for life or land. Our ship was in the courtyard, we would have made it out if not for,” she chokes then, as if something foul is stuck in her throat.

“Traitor,” someone hisses and the cell goes quiet. No one seems willing to tell him who this traitor is.

He looks around at them. Two women, fairly young, he recognises from the council meeting at Svava, as well as a quiet middle-aged man huddled at the back. The remaining five members of the council are not there and he wonders if there might be another cell, or if this is all that remains of the resistance. A Pámada native, the one who spoke before, is still standing by the cell bars, keeping a watchful gaze at the hallway outside.

Lastly his eyes land on the one Seulgi called Captain, a handsome man of medium height, supported on either side by the two female council members. He doesn’t recognise the face, but the man’s eyes are burning into his own long before they meet.

“Doyoung,” Hansol whispers, gripping his wrist with one hand as the other cups the back of his head. He must still be worried Doyoung is going to collapse again, and he just might as the look in the Captain’s eyes hold significant intent, burrowing through him with its strength.

“That’s Captain Zhang, he was the leader of Jaehyun’s team,” Hansol whispers in his ear, and Doyoung feels himself going faint at the mention of Jaehyun’s name. It starts as a chill spreading from the bottom of his spine, eventually blurring his vision and making his head feel too light on his shoulders, as if it is filled with nothing but air. He had forgotten.

For a few minutes he had forgotten about Jaehyun. For two years he has thought of nothing but Jaehyun, and now when he should hold his memory the closest, he forgot.  

“You’re his friend,” Captain Zhang says, his voice barely reaching across the small space between them. Doyoung surmises the blood staining his clothes is all his own; losing that much would leave anyone faint, at best.

“You’re lucky … to have someone like … to have him care for you,” the words come with great effort. Doyoung is surprised the man is still standing.

“Hansol, please” he turns to his friend, turning his hand in the other’s grip to press their palms together. Hansol is reluctant, clearly debating with himself as he looks from Doyoung to Captain Zhang and back.

“There isn’t much I can do, not without a blood transfusion which is what he really needs,” he rises from his seat and urges Captain Zhang to take his place.

“I can ease your pain,” he says when Captain Zhang makes no move to sit down. The man takes several moments more of consideration before he moves towards the narrow bench, and one could not be faulted for interpreting his reluctance as distrust, but Doyoung sees pride more than anything in Captain Zhang’s unwillingness to accept Hansol’s aid.

Instead of locating the wound like Doyoung thought he would do, Hansol simply lays both hands on Captain Zhang’s shoulders and closes his eyes to focus. He has never tried to understand how Hansol’s exceptional healing powers work, and despite Hansol constantly telling him it is not so, he can’t help but think it magical. Not with the way Captain Zhang sighs loudly and sits a little more relaxed on the hard seat within seconds of being touched.

“Captain?” he urges quietly after a while. He barely dares think it, but there is a sliver of hope niggling at the back of his mind. Hope that Jaehyun might be alive after all. It makes him impatient.

“We were in the mainframe when the building collapsed,” Captain Zhang starts softly, speaking slowly to avoid jumbling his words with his heavy accent.

“It happened so fast, I don’t know how I got the shield up in time, but I did. And I pulled him under, just as the rocks fell on us.”

The plasma shields, as he had thought. So there had been someone with a plasma shield in their arsenal. An extraordinary coincidence.

“It was good fortune I had one,” Captain Zhang mirrors his thoughts, “Heechul issued one for me last minute.”

“It was no coincidence, Heechul was fond of you,” Seulgi interrupts from the side and Doyoung doesn’t miss the tension that zaps up Captain Zhang’s back. He wonders what has happened to Heechul. His mentor would have been with Seulgi when the attack began so logic tells him he is no longer with them, but Doyoung desperately wishes that is not the case.

“Doyoung,” Captain Zhang grabs his attention after a long moment of quiet. “He wasn’t there when I regained consciousness. Jaehyun wasn’t there, in the ruins. He was gone.”

It takes his mind no less than a second to process the meaning behind Captain Zhang’s words, but it takes him significantly longer to believe it. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up only for them to shatter him into a million pieces once more.

“I remember the building falling on us, spreading around the shield bubble,” “surreal,” the Pámadan interrupts quietly. Captain Zhang continues unimpeded, his voice growing steadier with every word.

“I was holding onto him, and he was holding onto me, but the shield gave in eventually and the surge of it decompressing blew us apart. I didn’t see where he landed and I was knocked unconscious myself.”

“Was probably crushed under a pile of straggling rocks,” the Pámadan says and Seulgi surprises Doyoung by all but hissing at him.

“I’m just saying,” he says, finally turning from his watch post to raise his hands in surrender, “if the building didn’t get him then _they_ did for sure. Like they got everyone else.”

“The Intergalactic Council?” he asks for clarification. He looks at Seulgi but she is staring at her trembling hands, seeming lost to the world, so he turns to Captain Zhang instead.

“Not exactly,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate.

After spending so much of his life ensnared in a web of secrets and lies, Doyoung has gotten fairly good at detecting when something is intentionally being kept from him. He doesn’t think Captain Zhang is choosing not to tell him; deduces it is rather that he doesn’t know _what_ to tell him. As if he hasn’t quite wrapped his mind around the facts yet.

He looks around the room for Hansol and finds him tending to the middle-aged councilman who has suffered a head wound that is still trickling blood down the side of his face. Standing slowly from his perch on the hard wooden bench, he walks to the front of the cell to stand beside the Pámadan. He grips the iron bars, testing their strength, as he glances up and down the dimly lit hallway.

There are no doors that he can see; the hall goes on into the shadows and the walls and ceiling are a polished white tile, glinting in the dim light from the two sconces opposite their cell. It’s clean, would probably be a perfectly comfortable cell were it not for the stench.

A hand lands on his shoulder and Doyoung turns to find Hansol has taken the place of the Pámadan and is looking at him with a small smile curving the left side of his mouth.

“How are you feeling?” he whispers. Such a loaded question. Doyoung doesn’t know how to answer him. Physically, his body aches, his throat hurts, though not as bad as before, and his breathing is still a little laboured. His toes are cold, as are his fingers, but other than that he feels fine.

He knows that is not what Hansol wants to know however, but the things going on inside his head is much harder to put into words.

“Mostly numb, I think,” he settles on, grateful that Hansol doesn’t push anymore after that. He doesn’t want to think about Jaehyun, but at the same time he wants to think about him, always. The possibility that Jaehyun is still alive is niggling at his subconscious, but he doesn’t dare entertain the thought. He knows why he wanted Hansol to leave him in that dark hallway; wanted him to leave and forget so that he could fade out of existence along with his only precious person, his lifeline. Losing Jaehyun didn’t shatter him so much as it drained him, emptied him of hope and will and life.

In truth, he doesn’t care about what happened to the Capital. He doesn’t care what happened to the PPP or about the Intergalactic Council and what this all means for the future of the planet and its greater planetary system. He just doesn’t care. It is like he said that day on the Acropolis when Jaehyun’s perspective of the world was permanently altered; all that matters is Jaehyun, whether he is alive or not doesn’t change that.

“You should have left when I told you to,” he whispers, unsure if he meant for Hansol to hear him or not. He didn’t want this for him. Hansol deserves a happy ending, not being stuck in a cell waiting for the axe to fall on them.

“I wouldn't be much of a friend if I left you when you needed me the most,” Hansol leans against the bars, close enough for their shoulders to touch.

“We’re friends?” he asks, his voice a weak whisper in the air. Hansol sighs, the sound coming from deep in his chest and carrying the weight of a near decade of unresolved feelings.

“When you weren’t there, it was so easy to hate you. But when I saw you again and you needed me, I would never forgive myself if I didn’t do my best to keep you safe.”

Doyoung didn’t have anything to say to that, the magnitude of Hansol’s forgiveness leaving him mum.

“Just tell me honestly,” Hansol continues after a moment of silence, “my feelings about you won’t be affected no matter what you say, I promise. But did you ever know?”

He knows very well what Hansol is talking about, the one point of conflict between them. Taeyong.

He could say he didn’t truly know, and it wouldn't be a lie. Taeyong never told him and he never asked, but he did see. The image is one he will never forget, he knows that for sure. That horrid, grotesque image of a cut-open and hollowed out body floating in the jelly-like concoction in the stasis-tube.

He never felt like a prisoner in Taeyong’s house, but he did have plenty of rules and restrictions that Doyoung had to follow, most of them put in place so he wouldn't mess with Taeyong’s carefully structured system. But Doyoung was much too curious, and a forbidden room was far too enticing. Taeyong never said anything, but he must have known Doyoung was there, watching him from the shadows as he extracted the purple blood from the near unrecognisable creature and injected it into himself.

“I saw it,” he whispers, ashamed to admit it out loud.

Hansol sighs again, in pain this time. He was always so empathic, Doyoung doesn’t doubt he can imagine the terror and suffering of his brethren on his own body.

“I confronted him once,” Hansol takes Doyoung off guard. “This was before we met. He wouldn't confirm it, but I could tell. I felt it in the rhythm of his pulse when I grabbed his wrist and it was obvious by the purple tint to his mouth. He must have done a heart transplant.”

Doyoung had always thought it was just the blood, that Taeyong was infusing himself with enough Panacean blood to keep his body going when it should have long since decayed, but of course that wouldn't suffice. A human heart would never be able to sustain the flow of Panacean blood for that long. A Panacean heart in a human body however, the possibilities could be endless.

“I’m so sorry Hansol,” he whispers, taking his hand in his and letting them tangle between them.

“When I learned you had taken up with him, I was hurt. And I put the blame on you when you deserved none of it. _I’m_ sorry.”

Doyoung opens his mouth to say more when a loud clang sounds from down the hall. They both turn to face the bars, joined shortly by everyone but Seulgi and the two female council members. Captain Zhang stands tall next to him, gripping the cell bars hard enough to make his arms shake, and Doyoung feel slight admiration for him as he allows none of his pain to show on his face.

The click of several booted feet hitting the floor resounds in the hallway, and Doyoung holds his breath as the group enters the light. At the forefront is a woman, fiercely intimidating and terrifyingly familiar.

“It can’t be,” he whispers to himself, feeling cold shivers running up and down his back.

General Luna of the n.o.c.t. regiment, the highest ranking official of Curug Tam’s covert operations. His childhood nightmare.


	2. Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His world has turned upside down, but still nothing has changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, part 2 yay! Now this is the chapter with all the warnings, but I promise none of it is especially physically explicit, promise!

“The N.O.C.T. Regiment,” Luna says, enunciating clearly with every clack of her shoes on the polished marmor.

“The Narfi Order of Cross-Examination and Torture. Do you know who Narfi is?”

Neither Doyoung nor Hansol make any attempt to speak.

They had been moved from their cell more than an hour ago and taken to a room in the east wing near the library. Well, calling it a room might be an exaggeration, even if it once was a room. Its ceiling and most of its walls have crumbled in the aftermath of the warring and destruction, but the floor has been cleared of rubble and cleaned, and now it resembles more a patio than the study room it used to be.

The draft is terrible; cold winds that hit them from all angles, including a great downdraught from the mountain, serves its purpose in pushing them past the boundaries of uncomfortable. He can see Hansol suffering where he sits across from him. His entire body is shivering and his fingers seem almost frozen to the pommel of the armrests. Doyoung isn’t nearly as affected, but _they_ wouldn't know that. _They_ have no reason to, seeing as they don’t recognise him.

“Narfi,” Luna continues as if she never expected an answer, “is the mythical son of Loke, our god superior.”

Doyoung had heard rumors of the regiment, classified information being filtered through their mountain home like hot water. Their methods were brutal, galvanized by the god of faces, the shapeshifter Loke.

One of the men standing near the outer rim has the metamorphosis mask already attached to his face, a thin metal frame curving from the top of his head to disappear beneath his high collared jacket. The only other time Doyoung has seen one was when his brother showed him one in the archives on Gried, and Gongmyung couldn’t tell him exactly what it does other than it is something horrifying. At the moment it looks simply uncomfortable, and woefully out of place.

Luna walks in front of him, slowly circling them, and like all the times before in his youth, Doyoung likens the General to the metamorphosis her unit represents. He remembers her well from when he was younger as she was his mother’s friend. They would always laugh together, and Luna’s face was kind and almost soft in those moments, but his memories of his brother’s nightmare stories always made him doubt the image. He never got to learn which was real and what was the facade; doesn’t know if Luna is a friend pretending at being a predator, or if she is a monster falsifying goodness.

He doesn’t know her, so he doesn’t know the right way to approach her.

She is, at the least, portraying the predator to perfection, prowling the perimeter of the room, always keeping them in sight, sometimes coming closer just to keep them on edge as she continues to hold her silence. Doyoung doesn’t dare move, fearful of what she might do if he gives her an opening.

“What were you doing in the palace?” she asks after a long while. He doesn’t answer, only stares across from him at Hansol, evaluating his condition as well as he can.

Hansol’s skin is turning white, his lips so pale they barely have any colour left, and his eyes are lazy and unfocused. At least he is still shivering, and his body hasn’t grown numb to cold nor is it shutting down quite yet. Doyoung knows Hansol can last longer in any manner of severe conditions than humans can, but he still worries he may not have long.

“Our sensors picked up your movements as soon as you crossed through the walls, and tracked you through the servant’s quarters. You went to the stairwells, but they were unbreachable. Then you followed the hallway along the outer wall to the main wing of the palace.

Looking at this, I have to say. It’s almost like you were looking for something.”

She is holding a holopad in one hand, tracing the route he and Hansol had made through the palace grounds with one finger. Watching him; his face and his hands, the purposeful, relaxed tilt of his head, he knows nothing will miss her well-trained eyes.

“Of course, there are a lot of riches in a place like this, perhaps there are even a few trinkets left untouched still. This is bound to attract a few ruffians.” She trails a hand in the air around Hansol as she passes behind him.

“Though I would think a Panacea like this one would rather be repelled by all this. I understand they like to keep to themselves.”

Hansol doesn’t react in the slightest and Doyoung is beginning to worry for his life. They had taken their cloaks and jackets, leaving them in only their woollen undershirts. It is a clever tactic, allowing the elements to break them down and leave them susceptible to interrogation. But Doyoung can see them beginning to catch on, can see the gears turning behind Luna’s carefully studied gaze as she starts to realise it’s a tactic that won’t work on him.

“Best to cover him up a little so he’s not cold,” she smiles, never taking her eyes off Doyoung as one of her subordinates lays a thick blanket around Hansol’s shoulders. She presses the back of her hand to Hansol’s cheek in a show of concern and tuts. Her pretty face evens out when she looks back at Doyoung, no trace of hesitance left as she has clearly decided to switch tactics.

“What’s your name?” she asks him. Doyoung looks her steadily in the eyes, refusing to flinch as the metal toes of her shoes click ominously with every step she takes towards him.

“Tell me please, I so want to know,” a ghost of a smirk crosses her lips and Doyoung’s shoulders stiffen involuntarily. He doesn’t like being toyed with.

“Doyoung,” he says simply, refusing to give her any more but also aware she will know if he lies. It’s a good thing he hasn’t gone by Dongyoung in a decade, he doesn’t doubt she would make the connection in an instant.

“You’re a sturdy guy Doyoung,” she gestures barely at one of her subordinates lining the circle and within seconds a chair is placed behind her and she sits down with a toss of her long hair. Crossing one thin leg over the other, she folds her hands on top of her knee and narrows her eyes at him.

“The cold doesn’t bother you?” she asks, surprising Doyoung with the simple question.

“I have grown accustomed to the frost,” he replies, wishing silently that his legs were free so he could mirror her seated position. His mother taught him a few things about the subtle art of interrogation, having once been a master of it herself before she became queen, and he knows to act unaffected as long as possible. He wonders briefly if she was a part of the Narfi Order as well; it would explain her odd friendship with Luna.

“It puzzles me that a foreigner like yourself would be so adept at resisting it, when the Taranjian Princess barely lasted three hours,” she says, and Doyoung feels cold creep into his heart. She is talking about Wendy. The Shadow Princess as she was called in the palace, Jaehyun’s sister by blood and cousin by court.

His jaw tightens as anger rushes over him. Of all the ways to kill someone, this must be the cruelest.

Luna smiles smugly at him then and he knows he gave himself away. He had already guessed that they are looking for any of the Jung bloodline, looking for Jaehyun, and he was determined not to give them anything that could possibly lead them to find Jaehyun before he can.

“You are familiar with the girl?” Luna asks, but Doyoung knows she is only trying to goad him into talking. The smallest of muscle ticks will not go unnoticed by this woman.

“She was a fellow member of the People’s Political Party,” he says at long last, trying to regain the meager amount of control he lost.

“Yes, the people’s voice. A charming concept.”

Doyoung doesn’t dignify her comment with a response. Curug Tam was always a monarchy _and_ a democracy so he knows, all she wants is to push his buttons to see which one will work. Luna watches him silently for several minutes, tapping her fingers on the armrest of her chair not in restlessness, but in a calculated move to make herself seem at ease when she isn’t. She would be a fool to let her guard down. An interrogation is never a one-sided event; she loses her sway over him the second he no longer believes her hold.

“Let me paint you a picture, Doyoung,” she says, leaning forward slightly at the waist. Her hands fall limply over the armrests and she tosses her hair with a small shake of her head. Doyoung watches her intently, but there is no weakness, no physical attribute to make a pitfall, no hidden tremor of emotion to snare her. She runs the show, and he imagines she always does.

“There has been a cave-in. The ruins are easily visible, and already they have drawn quite the crowd, like accidents tend to do.” He is forced to clench his teeth to keep the scathing comment on the tip of his tongue from getting out.

“ _There might be people trapped inside_ , someone says, and the crowd begins to dig, slowly working their way down from the top of the ruins. To them, what they see is what they know, and for them there is only one solution.

“ _There might be another way in_ , someone else says, and goes searching for it. To them, what they see is not what they know, and for them there are multiple solutions.

“While the people who are hard at work digging will eventually tire, the knowledgeable one searches comfortably for twice, even thrice, as long as the rest of them.

“And they will find the people trapped in the ruins, because they have been there before, they have walked the grounds around it and wandered the halls of the residency. They hold knowledge the other people do not, and it elevates them.”

The holopad is once again open in her palm, showing the route he and Hansol had taken through the palace grounds in bright neon colours.

“Knowledge is power, Doyoung. Not status, not wealth, certainly not strength. Knowledge can get you anywhere, it can get you any _thing_. And my knowledge of you will get me knowledge of Jung Jaehyun, without a doubt.”

She rises fluently and without pause presses her fingers to his forehead and temples; the metal ovals on her fingertips burns his skin with cold. He doesn’t attempt to get away, it would be an exercise in futility, and breathes evenly as she continues to hold his head for several more seconds. It’s impossible to say what she is doing, she isn’t even looking at him and is instead letting her gaze roam around the darkened backdrop to her little stage. Once she lets him go, she disappears out of sight and Doyoung can only hear her voice echoing slightly between the buildings.

“Start slow, he is a precious creature after all,” Luna speaks louder than before, clearly not to him, and Doyoung gasps so sharply the cold air pains his throat when the man with the metamorphosis mask walks into the circle and straight for Hansol. The man is so similar to him in build, a little more bulk where Doyoung is slender, but his previously blonde hair is now coal black and Doyoung fears what he will see long before the man turns to face him.

“You have such cherub-like features,” Luna says close to his ear, just as the man turns to look at him over the top of Hansol’s bowed head. Looks at him with _his_ face, _his_ slanted eyes, like someone held a mirror in front of his face, except their expressions don’t match. While Doyoung is unable to contain the terror seeping through his veins from being reflected on his face, the other man, this interloper with _his_ eyes and _his_ lips and _his_ high cheekbones, remains blank-faced. Not a twitch of an eyebrow as he reaches around Hansol and grasps a wrist, pulling mercilessly at his chilled fingers until they snap from the pommel of the armrest. Hansol jerks and Doyoung would be glad for the sign of life if he didn’t know it was a reaction to pain coursing through his fingers.

“It’s unsettling,” Luna speaks quietly into his ear, and even without touching him she makes sure he doesn’t look away from the tableau in front of them. He feels her head move against his when she nods and the other man wraps his fingers around Hansol’s right hand still on the pommel and does the same to it.

“You know he’s not in the worst of pain right now, but that can change. It all depends on _you_ ,” she says the words slowly so only he will hear and Doyoung doesn’t know which _him_ she is referring to.

It’s a trick, nothing but an illusion, he is sitting chained to this chair and he would never hurt Hansol. But he already has though, hasn’t he? He hurt Hansol by leaving, hurt him by never coming back, hurt him by falling for Taeyong’s charms, falling for him. All Hansol has done is save him, and all he gave in return was _pain._

Pain that has Hansol crying out as _he_ bends and pulls at his fingers, playing with them to aggravate the already injured ligaments.

“It’s a trick,” he whispers, the words feeling thick in his throat, and closes his eyes to the scene. It is no use, his own face is etched in his memory like nothing else is, and he cannot rid himself the image of long fingers, like his own, causing pain to a person he holds so dear.

“As are rainbows, tricks of water and light. Tricks can be good or bad, depending on how you look at them,” Luna says and Doyoung knows there is a meaning to her words as she does not waste a single one, but he cannot fathom it.

“ _Look at him_ ,” she repeats in a firmer tone, “or we have no use for him.”

His eyes snap open of their own accord, blindly fixing on Hansol and the image of himself and then they clear. He is standing bent over Hansol’s hunched form, gripping the chair on either side of the Panacea and is staring right back at him. The man is staring right back at him.

“There is only one question I want you to answer,” Luna says and Doyoung is ready to do anything to finally give Hansol some relief from all the pain he has caused him.

“Where can we find Prince Jaehyun?” And like his brain rearranges itself, Doyoung sits straighter and bites his teeth together and refuses to make so much as a sound. He will not give Jaehyun to these monsters, not for anything. _You don’t know where he is_ , a wispy voice says in his head, but his instincts have already kicked in and there is nothing he can do. _Nothing you want to do_ , that voice says again and Doyoung turns his head to look at Luna whose face is still so close to his, but her mouth is shut in waiting. The cold must be getting to him.

After several moments of shared eye contact, Luna nods at her subordinate and turns Doyoung’s head towards the front again with a single finger on his chin.

“One question,” she says and then all his attention is taken by the him across the room as he kneads Hansol’s shoulders almost tenderly. A sigh and then the gentle touch is replaced by finger blades running across dark skin, creating thin grooves in the flesh of Hansol’s cheeks. They continue down Hansol’s front, easily cutting through his shirt to stain it with blood, and Doyoung shivers at the thought of how much damage those small blades could do if he wasn’t very careful. If t _he man_ wasn’t very careful, not him, it’s not really him. The blood freezes as soon as it hits the air, mercifully clotting all of Hansol’s wounds and leaving tiny red crystals on his skin. It’s almost beautiful.

“One question,” Luna repeats, but even with her mouth so close to his ear he can barely hear her over Hansol’s loud gasping breaths. They fill his ears and draws his singular focus.

Hansol is in pain and he doesn’t want to help. No, he does want to, but he can’t. All he needs to do is tell the truth; he doesn’t know. Any lie would be caught in Luna’s web of scrutiny, just as the truth would be accepted no matter what it is. And it is so very simple, he _does not know_. Jaehyun could be on the moon for all he knows.

But the words won’t come, and Doyoung can’t force them out.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but he must have kept his silence for too long when Luna sighs.

“Do you know why Panacean see so well in the dark, or even at any other time?” she asks, but goes on without waiting for a response.

“They have ten times as many nerve-endings in their eyes as humans do. It gives them excellent eyesight, but it also puts them at a far higher risk of excruciating pain.”

He can see himself lifting Hansol’s chin, and he sees himself trace the high arch of Hansol’s cheeks and his upturned nose and he holds his breath as his fingers, decked with small, razor sharp blades, ghosts along the corners of Hansol’s eyes.

“You should use the lasers,” Luna says into his ear and Doyoung almost falls into her web, almost nods his head in agreement. He stretches out his fingers, allows the blades to shrink back until they are harmless, and curves a hand under Hansol’s chin to hold him steady. It’s difficult to do it on his own, but he points the handheld laser at Hansol’s left eye and turns it on.

Several seconds go by uneventfully. Hansol is barely hanging onto consciousness, his mind sluggish from the cold and the uncomfortable, stinging pain and in the halo of light surrounding them Doyoung can see his limp eyes and how his chest moves with laboured breaths. Even easier, he sees the green point of the laser reflecting off the glassy surface of Hansol’s eye, slowly burning the sensitive retina.

It takes Hansol crying out in pain for Doyoung to be brought back to his senses, back to himself as the sound detaches him from the _other him_.

“Please stop,” he chokes, his tongue feeling thick and foreign in his mouth. Luna doesn’t deign him with a response, nor even a look as her head remains pressed to his and barely a breath passes her lips.

He looks at Hansol again, but only for a second. His tormentor has Hansol in a firm headlock, two fingers pulling his eyelids apart as he holds the laser steady with his other hand. It looks like a two-person job, but Luna makes no indication for anyone to help him. It would ruin the illusion, Doyoung knows, can see now that he has escaped it. He saw himself hurting Hansol and was so ensnared in the lie of it he could almost feel Hansol’s blood freezing under his fingertips. But Hansol is sitting ten feet away from him and the person causing him pain is _not_ him.

“Where is he, Doyoung?” Luna asks and finally touches him. She grabs his shoulders just tight enough to make him feel it, almost like a show of compassion as Hansol continues to cry in pain and every broken sound sends shivers through Doyoung’s body.

“You can make it stop right now.”

He chances another glance across at Hansol and sees him hunched over, finally released from the torture. Doyoung won’t fool himself to thinking it’s a show of mercy, the only reason they would stop is because there is no more damage they can do.

He holds his silence as words won’t form, his lips won’t move yet his mind is screaming in agony. The guilt he feels at his inability to put anyone but Jaehyun first is deep enough to drown him, the currents of his self-hatred pulling him under as the man bearing his face simply switches hands and begins the torment anew.

 _He doesn’t know!_ He wants to scream at them all, wants to force them all away and make them stop hurting Hansol, who doesn’t deserve any of this. He doesn’t deserve what Doyoung is doing to him.

“Tell me what I want to know and I’ll make it stop,” Luna says with more urgency, her voice slithering into his ears and pushing his heartbeat even faster. Hansol cries and cries until his voice gives out and only choked sounds of terrible pain comes out and settles at the bottom of Doyoung’s spine. He knows he will never forget that sound.

When Hansol slumps together, this time Doyoung does too. Exhaustion is setting into his bones, and the guilt weighing him down is also blocking his throat and breath is becoming sparse.

“That will always be on your conscience,” Luna says, formulating into words all that Doyoung knows best.

“It was not me who blinded him, it was not my subordinate, it was you Doyoung.”

“But he is still alive, and there is much pain you can still inflict on him if that is what you want. Or you can tell me what I want to know, and this ends right now.”

Before Doyoung can even take a breath, a new figure enters the scene, inserting himself between them without a thought, and for the first time Doyoung catches a fluctuation in Luna’s careful mien. A hint of agitation sounds in her quiet exhale and in the way her fingers clench briefly on his shoulder.

“What is it, thane?” Luna rises to her full height and steps to the side of Doyoung. If she was trying to intimidate the newcomer with height she failed even before she started, as the man is easily as tall as Hansol, if not more so.

“I am in the middle of an interrogation, you have no right to interrupt me like this.”

“In fact I do, on orders of the King,” the man says and Doyoung jerks a little as he recognises that voice. He has grown so much in the ten years since Doyoung saw him, but when he properly looks at him he finds that Lucas is still painfully familiar.

“That one is to be brought to the King immediately,” Lucas says with no intonation whatsoever. Maybe he doesn’t know why, most likely he doesn’t recognise Doyoung for who he really is; Doyoung imagines he knows Lucas well enough to see through him, even now.

He can’t fathom why the King would want to see him. A chill goes through him as he wonders who he will meet, who will have been given the honour of taking his brother’s seat and receiving his title?

Luna sighs deeply and gestures at her subordinates who all retreat and, like shedding a skin, she walks to Hansol with an air of concern, touching him gently and pulling the blanket tighter around him.

“Get him cleaned up and seen to, then take him back to the cell. You can take that one,” she says to Lucas while pointing a finger at Doyoung, and he can feel the waves of disgust rushing at him from her ramrod figure. “I’m done with him.”

Lucas undoes his bonds and pulls him up, holding him firmly by the arm as he begins to walk away from the lit patio and into the darkened courtyard. Doyoung is grateful for the support as he struggles with finding the strength to keep himself afoot, much less moving at the pace Lucas sets.

They move quickly but carefully around the ruins, to the part of the palace left mostly untouched. It’s the wing where Jaehyun’s room used to be, he recognises and feels a little sick at the thought of their space remaining whole, locked like his room on Runtah. Their past imprisoned like Taeyong’s corpse is imprisoned.

Lucas leads him up a well lit spiral staircase and then down a long hallway Doyoung has walked a thousand times. At the very end is a study, he knows. A large, oval room with high ceilings and large windows. It was one of Jaehyun’s favourite rooms in the palace, simply for the view it offers. He is pushed inside after Lucas opens the door, and then he is left alone.

The silence lasts only a moment before a figure sitting in the darkness below the windows comes towards him. The wheelchair moves silently across the floor and there is no ambient noise to cover the voice that reaches his ears with the most terrible sense of familiarity.

“Dongyoung, it’s so good to see you again,” the voice says and the light in the room grows bright enough to illuminate the familiar face of his older brother.

 

*

*  *  *

*

 

His brother looks just like he remembers him. A little older, a little worn, but his face still has the same crooked smile, his hair is still long and wavy and the reddish-brown he inherited from their father, and his eyes still glint with stars in their depths. Doyoung always liked how it made him look like he held some big secret that was only his to know.

When they were kids, Gongmyung always looked out for him. He spent time with him despite their large age difference, and Doyoung learned more from him than he did from any of his tutors. Gongmyung was a _good_ brother. But that doesn’t change how utterly betrayed Doyoung feels upon seeing him alive after all this time.

“You’re alive,” he says, feeling numb.

Gongmyung laughs, a burst of lilted sound that disappears into the room. With silence once more around them, he looks at Doyoung and smiles as his eyes grow bright with brimming tears.

“Those are my words,” he says and reaches out for Doyoung with a hand. He doesn’t reach far in his incapacitated state and Doyoung makes no gesture to reciprocate, leaving his hand floating awkwardly in the air.

“You’re _alive_ ,” Doyoung repeats, unable to find any other words to say. With meeting Luna and then Lucas, familiar faces popping up when he would never have expected it, finding his brother again shouldn’t be such a surprise. But considering the last time he saw Gongmyung he was weak and frail and hanging on a last shred of life, the thought of finding him _alive_ never once entered his mind.

“You found a cure then,” Gongmyung wheels back towards the large desk in the centre of the room, waving a hand for Doyoung to follow and take a seat. His smile only dims a little when Doyoung remains standing where he is.

“No, I didn’t,” is all he says, slowly finding his words coming back to him. Gongmyung looks at him, studies him so intently Doyoung feels his insides squirm.

“Don’t tell me you never got it,” he says, his tone light with an underlying threat not to lie to him. He sounds just like their father when he does that, and the uncanny resemblance sends shivers down Doyoung’s back. He has never been on the receiving end of Gongmyung’s kingly indignance before, but neither of them are the same as they used to be. And he isn’t surprised it only took three words from him to put Gongmyung on edge. Not when he himself can feel the hostility coming off him in waves.

Somewhere in his mind there is a voice screaming out that this isn’t Gongmyung, this isn’t his brother, there is no way it can be. But the proof is staring him right in the face, hard eyes not dampened in the slightest by the genuine happiness in Gongmyung’s smile.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gongmyung says, waving a hand as if to chase away the tension like a persistent fly.

“You’re alive, you’re here and we’re together again.”

Doyoung doesn’t understand how he can be so casual in this instance; just as much as it has for him, Gongmyung’s world must have been turned upside down. But he is acting as if Doyoung has just come home from a sabbatical, not from a supposed death.

“It does matter,” he says, feeling his body heat up with all the warring emotions inside him. He takes several deep breaths as he tries to calm his raging mind, tongue moving restlessly over his lips as his mouth feels suddenly too dry.

“You left me!” is what comes out in the end, and it is not at all what he would have expected. Neither did Gongmyung, going by the shocked look on his face. But with the words comes the realisation that this is the root of all his negative feelings.

“I went looking for a cure, for _you_ , and you didn’t stop me. You were leaving and you let me go?!” He can feel the words forming in his throat, so hard and coarse they pain him as he spits them out, and then they echo around the vaulted room.

Gongmyung stares at him in silence, his fingers tight around the armrests of his wheelchair, and Doyoung has so many more things he wants to say, but not until he gets some sort of justification for his abandonment.

“I had been sending envoys out for years, ever since our mother died and the crown became mine. To every corner of this system, and then beyond. I was looking for a cure, for all our people.” It’s unnecessary and Doyoung knows Gongmyung only adds it as a juxtapose to his own remark. Reminding him of the larger picture. But Gongmyung doesn’t know that Doyoung no longer cares for the larger picture.

“It was kept secret in case it ended a futile attempt,” Doyoung doesn’t care that he is interrupting, crossing his arms over his chest and scoffing, “I was a prince, _your brother_.”

“But not on the council!” Gongmyung throws back instantly.

“You were too young.”

Silence stretches between them like a rubber band, ready to snap with the tension building in the air.

“Only ten days after you left, we got the good news we had been hoping for. The Genie came home, one of the very first ships I sent out. While the entire crew had been healthy at the time of departure five years before, Captain Hwang informed me they had all fallen sick, one by one, during the course of their journey. But _every single one_ of them made it back, and we did every test we could think of and found no trace of the parasite in any of them. They had found the cure we needed, and we had no time to waste.”

Doyoung feels a sharp spike of pain in his chest at his brother’s choice of words. Gongmyung always held a big regard for the responsibility placed on him as king, but to know that he found looking for Doyoung as a waste of time, hurt him more than he can say.

“Don’t twist my words, Dongyoung,” Gongmyung says and Doyoung hadn’t realised he was mumbling to himself out loud.

“I had people _scouring_ the lands for you, but you were nowhere to be found,” Gongmyung’s voice breaks and Doyoung isn’t surprised to see the tears that spill over and fall slowly down his face. His brother was always the more expressive of the two.

“I was in Aliran,” is all he says, letting Gongmyung piece together the rest on his own. He is sure his brother is aware of who Hansol is.

“The Panacean, he was there,” is Gongmyung’s short reply, and Doyoung feels a rush of guilt sweep over him once again as he thinks about his friend. He doesn’t think he even deserves to call Hansol his friend anymore.

“No one thought you could have made it further than the Ridge, so we didn’t search beyond it. I’m sorry, Dongyoung.”

It’s something, he tells himself, Gongmyung is genuine and Doyoung refuses to be irrational. But the apology is a poor remedy for the gaping wound of consequences that his brother’s actions made. If he had known, if he had stayed, he would never have met Hansol, never would have met Taeyong. He would have never been there to put a bullet in Ten’s chest. Never would have driven Jaehyun to give up his own life for a cause that didn’t have to be his.

“But we can be together now; make up for all the time we lost,” Gongmyung says when Doyoung remains silent. It’s so tempting, and for once, Doyoung doesn’t let himself think too much and just acts. Finally taking the seat Gongmyung offered him, he reaches out for his brother and pulls him close in a long overdue hug. Gongmyung’s tears are wetting the fabric of his shirt and it pulls at him, tugs the damaged strings of his heart until the tears fall from his eyes as well, soaking into his older brother’s shoulder.

“You’re alive,” he whispers, one last time. But it feels different now, the shock has settled, the distrust is melting away as they stay in each other’s arms, and all he feels when it ends, is relief.

They sit back, wiping their eyes and laughing breathlessly at each other. A new kind of ease falls over Doyoung, something familiar like from a distant memory, and he can’t let go of Gongmyung’s hand as he soaks in the feeling. He has his brother back, his brother _is_ back, not dead at all but alive and breathing the same air as him.

“What happened? Why are you-” _in a wheelchair_ , he doesn’t say, gesturing in the air. Gongmyung laughs, and Doyoung has missed that sound.

“It’s okay Dongyoung, I consider myself lucky all I lost were my legs.” Doyoung gets that, but with the technology they have now, he shouldn’t have to stay like this.

“Why didn’t you get it fixed?” he frowns. No matter the cause, partial paralysis is relatively easy to reverse, any doctor could do it.

Gongmyung sighs, shoulders tensing then drooping and he looks at Doyoung like he thinks he will never understand.

“My paralysis is a consequence of the parasite attacking the nerve fibres in my spinal cord. We are cured now, and it can be easy to forget the evil that terrorised our planet for decades, that massacred our people, neighbours and loved ones. I choose to stay in this chair as a reminder to myself of the injustice that was done to us.”

There is bitterness in Gongmyung’s voice, memories of pain and suffering, but also determination. Gongmyung has a purpose for coming back and Doyoung is a little afraid to find out what it is.

 

A knock on the door breaks the somber atmosphere and Lucas walks through it after Gongmyung calls for him to enter. He is carrying a syringe in his hands, cradling it like it’s something too precious for his big hands to hold. Doyoung remembers Lucas as an excitable, clumsy boy, but he must have grown up well for Gongmyung to keep him as a close aide like this. He wants to say something to Lucas, to let him know that he never forgot about him, to make him aware of his identity because it is obvious to him that Lucas still doesn’t know his long lost prince, and good friend, is sitting in front of him. But somehow, he feels it is better that no one knows. For now.

“Thank you Lucas,” Gongmyung smiles warmly at the younger man, barely past his teenage years. He takes the syringe from him and Lucas bows at the waist and retreats out into the hallway again.

“The cure,” Gongmyung says and holds the syringe up into the light. “I had Lucas procure it from the stores after I knew it was really you. Take it, please.” Gongmyung pushes the syringe at Doyoung and he hesitantly takes it between two fingers.

“What will it do? Does it have any side effects?” he asks, his voice hushed as he turns the item around in his hands and watches the pale green liquid flow from one end to the other. It’s a heavy dose, the two inch vial is almost full, and he is a little reluctant to put it in his body.

“You’ll feel a little sick as the tonic works to dispel the parasite, aches in your stomach and urethra, heartburn maybe. It depends on where in your body the parasite has concentrated.” In the lungs for him, Doyoung thinks, subconsciously pressing a hand to his chest. He thinks about Hansol, and the painless aid he has given him over the years. Then he thinks about what Hansol went through not even an hour ago because of him and knows he has no right to ask for anything from him ever again.

Thinking no more of the potential side effects, Doyoung uncaps the needle and pulls his sleeve up.

“Just like a blood test,” Gongmyung murmurs and his quiet voice steadies Doyoung’s hand as the needle pierces his skin and he injects the tonic into his body.

“There,” Gongmyung takes his hand, gripping it tightly as he smiles widely at Doyoung. “Now, tell me please, what happened to you after we left?”

Doyoung sighs, feeling a little dizzy as he lays the syringe on the desk in front of him, he had never much liked needles. Gongmyung’s question floats lazily around his head, so simple but so difficult to answer. He doesn’t want to tell his brother about how he was starving, alone in the burning streets of the Ark because the _Libertas_ thought he lacked character, or how he walked around hating Gongmyung because he had left him behind, though at the time he believed death was what took him. And he doesn’t want to tell him about Taeyong, how his innocence was corrupted at the hands of a four hundred year old man who looked no older than twenty five. He can’t tell him about Jaehyun.

“Maybe, if it’s easier, you can start with this last year?” Gongmyung urges and Doyoung catches up on the odd tone of his voice right away. Doyoung says nothing at all.

“How about you start with the boy in this photo?” Gongmyung prods and holds up a palm-sized storage device painted over in a muted yellow and a blue like crystal ice. When Gongmyung opens it the picture that appears above it in holographic form is exactly as he expected. It is of him and Jaehyun, in Jaehyun’s room. He is leant against one of the large windows, sitting in the wide window sill and Jaehyun had sprawled between his legs and pressed his back to his chest to take the picture of them.

It is a memento of the best day of Doyoung’s life and the memory of it hits him with the force of a tidal wave, sucking him into the maelstrom of feelings in his heart for Jaehyun and for the beautiful thing they had.

They had spent the entire day locked inside Jaehyun’s room, having food brought up from the kitchen and eating whatever they wanted. They had taken a long shower just for the hell of it, just to stand naked together under the hot stream of water. Jaehyun had read to him from his favourite book, and in return he had told Jaehyun stories about the everyday life of Taranjàs citizens. They had made love as many times as they could, until their bodies were sore and utterly exhausted, and Doyoung still remembers how soft Jaehyun looked under him, how gently Jaehyun held him when he was on top of him. He will never find a love like Jaehyun, he knows that with every fibre of his being.

“Where did you get that?” he asks, his voice choked with too much emotion. Gongmyung shuts off the small hard drive and graciously hands it over to Doyoung, albeit with a heavy, despondent sigh.

“In the prince’s bedroom, where it seems you have spent quite a bit of your time,” he says, rolling his wheelchair a little away from Doyoung. The reacquired distance puts Doyoung on edge all over again.

“I wasn’t sure it was actually you until I learned of a man in our custody who went by the name _Doyoung_. It was too much of a coincidence.”

Gongmyung wheels himself around the large desk and opens a drawer. He pulls a raygun out, perfectly white except for the small light blue insignia at the bottom of the handle of the two moons of Curug Tam, and for a split second Doyoung thinks _this is it_. But Gongmyung lays the gun down on the desk, not intending to use it at all, but rather, for Doyoung to do so.

“We will have clothes fabricated for you, announcing your status as Prince and King Brother. The lost son miraculously returned.” Doyoung reaches for the raygun and won’t admit that his fingers tremble as they hesitantly wrap around it, feeling the unique chill of a real Curug cold gun seep through his skin.

“I have told no one of _that_ ,” Gongmyung continues, pointing vaguely at the painted hard drive clutched in Doyoung’s hand. “No one will know of your disgrace and we can leave it in the past where it belongs, so long as you tell me where the prince is now.” Doyoung’s fingers snap tight around the handle of the gun.

“Jung Jaehyun, first of his name and son of the dread king Jung Jaehyuk, the butcher in our Curug slaughterhouse, the executioner of our young and our old, the instigator of the slow massacre of our people, how much more plainly do you need me to put it?!”

Gongmyung is livid, riled up by his own tirade, and Doyoung curses himself for not having noticed the tumultuous sea held dormant under his brother’s smile.

“Jaehyun is not his father,” he throws back, rising to his feet. It’s so easy to feel superior to Gongmyung now, looking down at him like this, and Doyoung hates it. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, any of it. Why can’t he ever have it all? Why does he always have to _choose_?

“Family is family,” Gongmyung says with a careless wave of his hand.

“And we cannot start over until we have purified ourselves of that which sought to destroy us. The prince needs to die.”

He doesn’t realise the gun is still in his hand until it is pointed at Gongmyung’s head. A violent shiver goes through him then, eyes welling up and spilling over with tears in a second because he already knows. There is only one way this will end, because there is only one way he will allow it to end.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, sobs racking his chest yet his hand holds steady. He feels like he has been here before, and in his mind’s eye the vaulted room flickers and is replaced with white walls and an abundant bookcase and then the image shatters. Thousands upon thousands of pieces crumbling into a dark abyss. And when he opens his eyes he is a brotherless orphan once again.

 

*

*  *  *

*

 

He meets Lucas in the hallway, but slips past him without a glance and no reaction from Lucas either until he has almost reached the stairwell and the other’s anguished voice echoes between the stone walls. He runs blindly down the winding stairs, vision blurry with tears that no longer wants to fall.

Making his way to the servant’s quarters is a matter of familiarity and habit, and from there he finds the narrow staircase to the underground prison facility. The walls here are dirtier, the floor worn blank from countless patrolling feet. It’s dingy, at least in comparison with the rest of the palace, and the basement is small, the cells it contains reserved for those who would seek harm to the royal family, but Doyoung still finds himself lost in the dim corridors.

They all look the same, and the route he memorised when he and Hansol were led out earlier that night doesn’t help him at all when he entered from a different direction. At least there are no one around. He has no plan for what to do, but he knows he can’t leave without Hansol. Everyone that he has sacrificed for Jaehyun’s life; he knows Hansol cannot be one of them.

 

A loud voice echoes through the corridor, startling Doyoung enough to almost make him lose the hard drive still in his hand. He presses his back to the wall and looks up and down the corridor, but sees nothing. Surmising the sound came from the door a little further down the hall, he slinks along the wall and slowly nudges the heavy door open a smidge.

It’s the right hallway, he recognises the particular scuffing of the floor and the slightly tilted wall sconce. There are two figures outside the cell, kids he thinks, at least a few years younger than him. One of them at least, is easy to identify, russet hair framing a youthful face, but the other he can only guess from his loud, high-pitched voice. The boy’s face is completely covered by a porcelain mask, and every inch of his body is clad in black, thick clothing.

“You lay off him now or we’ll leave you here to rot!” the boy yells, shaking a fist at the cell bars. The other one with the russet hair cowers behind his friend, but his fists are clenched in anger at his sides, barely restrained rage in his entire stance.

The boy with the mask turns abruptly towards the door and Doyoung slips back to hide against the wall. They’re just kids, but for some reason Doyoung doesn’t want to be near either of them. He can make a guess at who the boy in the animal mask is, and the guilt rushes back to grip his heart and his throat and squeeze his eyeballs until they ache.

The door next to him flies open, the vaguely familiar council members he was jailed with not two hours before comes rushing through, paying him no mind as they escape their horrid prison. Captain Zhang and the General follow them, surprise at seeing him halting them in their step and Doyoung takes a deep breath as he tries to find any words to say. It is an unnecessary effort as Seulgi lets out a single sob and runs off down the corridor, and Captain Zhang only looks at him solemnly and says, “I believe he is stronger than either of us imagined,” before he leaves as well. He can’t remember if he thanked Captain Zhang for trying to save Jaehyun’s life.

 

It’s quiet around him again. Doyoung’s legs feel weak, his head too heavy. The raygun in his pocket burns like a hot poker against his side and he is exhausted. But inside he feels empty.

“Are you going to just stand there?” the somewhat mocking voice of the boy in the mask startles him out of his thoughts. He leaves without waiting for a reply and Doyoung finds his body moving on its own to follow him.

The corridor is silent now, the young man with the russet hair is leant against the wall opposite the cell and wringing his hands together. Hansol is nowhere to be seen.

“Uncle, he’s here,” the boy says, confirming Doyoung’s suspicions with a single word. It’s Donghyuk.

Hansol is sitting inside the cell, hunched over and trembling, and Doyoung flinches at the sight of him. He doesn’t want to see him, wants to close his eyes and pretend the last few hours never happened, but he forces himself to face it. He has never claimed to be a good person, but the things he has done this night surpasses anything he has ever done before.

Hansol lifts his head from his hands and turns it in Doyoung’s direction, but his eyes drift and fall blindly on a spot several feet to his left. The skin around his eyes is red and swollen and his eyes are bloodshot, the white sclera almost completely red. It must still hurt because Hansol’s breaths are labored and his face is pinched.

“Hansol, I-” Hansol holds a hand up to stop him, but Doyoung doesn’t let it deter him. “I’m so sorry.”  

Hansol holds his hand out and Doyoung is quick to move to his aid, but Donghyuk gets there first. Watching him grip Hansol’s hand in his without hesitation and wrap an arm around his back to help him stand, it’s hard to remember that Donghyuk is blind as well.

“I am wounded, but not dead. That’s better than Jaehyun would be if they ever found him,” he says and Doyoung aches for the compassion still in Hansol’s voice. It’s strange that he should forgive this so easily, when he held a grudge for so long over Doyoung’s relationship with Taeyong, but he is loathe to question it.

“You have changed Doyoung,” Hansol explains anyway, with a smile. “For the better.”

Donghyuk looks at him then and Doyoung looks back, into the blank whiteness of his eyeless mask and he is certain; Donghyuk knows what he has done.

“Can we leave?” a shaky, breathless voice sounds from behind Doyoung, reminding him of the fourth person to their party. The boy is still shaking, fists clenched and he looks to be in pain and it is only then that Doyoung really notices his surroundings, most notably the bent bars of the jail cell. The ceiling above the entrance is cracked and he can only imagine the force that must have been exerted to bend the steel bars, but there is no device anywhere in the hallway.

“You can go ahead Jaemin, we’ll be right behind you,” Donghyuk says to the boy and he wastes no time lingering, pushing off the wall and all but running out the door. Donghyuk and Hansol follow at a slower pace and Doyoung takes up the rear, one hand wrapped around the handle of his raygun. He doesn’t know where Jaehyun is, and the only person left in the world that he considers family has been crippled and weakened by his doing. Hansol needs his protection now, he tells himself over and over until the emptiness inside him is filled with it, and it alone.

 

They make it out into the freezing cold without encountering any Curug soldiers, odd seeing as how Doyoung just murdered their king. He was expecting to be chased to his own death, but instead the courtyard is as quiet as the grave, not even a light flickering in the wind anywhere to be seen.

“They are mourning,” Donghyuk says, his voice hushed. It is the quiet before the storm. Once Gongmyung’s body has been washed and dressed and put in a coffin, the time for grief will have passed and then they will not stop until justice has been served.

“We should hurry,” he says, watchful all the same, the raygun now at his side. Jaemin is waiting for them and he seems just as antsy as Doyoung, though probably for different reasons. He can’t quite get a read of the strange boy, the anger from before has been replaced by a fear strong enough that Doyoung can all but smell it in the air. But he seems so introspective, eyes not really seeing the world around him, that Doyoung is led to believe the boy’s fear is only of himself.

“Why did you come here all on your own, Donghyuk?” he asks as they struggle slowly through the collapsed rubble of the palace walls. He has an idea, but it is too fantastical to ever be real, but he still needs to make sure.

“I didn’t come alone, I came with Jaemin,” Donghyuk says and there is a simplicity to his tone, but at the same time a mischievous lilt to his words.

“He is but a boy,” Doyoung says. _And not a very stable one_ , he thinks to himself. Donghyuk snorts, and steadies Hansol on top of a large, flat stone.

“Jaemin is so much more than a boy, so much more than you or I or anyone,” he says and Doyoung is still confused, but only for a second longer as Donghyuk points in front of them, at the very boy in question. Jaemin is clearing a path, lifting heavy rocks like they weigh nothing and Doyoung chides himself for not noticing on his own.

“What is he?” he breathes, fingers growing tight around his gun as cold fear settles in his bones. The bent bars, the cracked ceiling, it all makes sense when you factor in an unstable boy with superhuman strength.

“He’s Jaemin,” Donghyuk says and his voice is filled with so much conviction Doyoung would not dare to speak against him, if he was so inclined.

 

They walk for a great length in absolute silence, Jaemin leading the way through the snowy and deserted streets of the city. Doyoung walks close enough to give Hansol a hand when he stumbles on the uneven ground, but mostly he keeps to the back of the small group, his head on a swivel. His finger is restless on the trigger, searching for deceit in every shadow and every flicker of a curtain in the wind, and every so often his eyes stray back to Jaemin. Of all conceivable threats, he fears _him_ the most.

He doesn’t understand it, how can Jaemin have strength like this? He looks like a regular boy, his Rupian features the only thing distinguishing him from Doyoung himself, and there is nothing special about the shape of his body, in fact he looks rather on the skinny side.

The silence between them is broken by the loud whoosh of a speeder not far above their heads. The ceremony has ended, and the Curug have started their search.

Within seconds another speeder flies past and they scurry to take cover under the eaves of a still standing house. The street around them is too dark for them to have been seen, but Doyoung holds his breath until the sound of the speeders disappears into the distance.

“They will have people on the ground too, we shouldn’t linger,” he says and moves to pull Hansol’s other arm over his shoulders. They will move quicker with both of them supporting him.

“Who are they looking for, Doyoung?” Hansol asks quietly, but he already knows the answer.

“They are looking for me,” he gasps, the pain in his chest a sudden, uninvited guest. As it doesn’t dissipate, Doyoung begins to long for the emptiness that made his insides ache with it. It was far better than the searing pain spreading under his skin now.

“Doyoung,” Donghyuk says, his voice softer than he has ever heard it, and his hand on Doyoung’s arm is gentle and soothing.

“Please don’t blame yourself. There is a trigger in your head, any threat to Jaehyun’s life or wellbeing sets it off, and that’s not your fault. It’s just how it is.” His voice is soothing and his words are comforting, like lies usually are.

“Jaemin has it too,” Donghyuk tries once more to convince him, “but that’s not of his own will. His strength comes with a cost, just like your love for Jaehyun comes with a cost. It’s not your fault.”

Doyoung gently pulls his arm from Donghyuk’s grip and hoists Hansol’s arm over his shoulders, pulling them both from under the eave.

“That would be nice,” he says, voice gruff with pain and so many other things, “but it’s _my_  head, and it was _my_ finger on the trigger. It’s _only_ my fault.”

Jaemin is looking at him, but Doyoung ignores him, guiding Hansol down the street as fast as he dares, on his own until Donghyuk catches up and takes Hansol’s other side.

“We need to find cover,” he says, racking his brain for anywhere they can go where the Curug can’t find them.

“We need to go to the southern bazaar,” Donghyuk says decidedly, not looking at anyone. Doyoung wants to refuse, any of the four bazaars in the city would be a terrible place to hide; the large open space around them would make them visible from air the second they stepped outside and the countless entrances would be impossible to keep track of. But he remembers as he opens his mouth that Donghyuk is Johnny’s son, and has all of Johnny’s extraordinary powers. If he wants to go to the southern bazaar then he has a reason for it. Closing his mouth with a sigh, Doyoung keeps his silence and lets Jaemin lead the way through the cramped, narrow streets to the southern part of the city. They’re not far away in that case, Donghyuk must have always intended for them to go there.

They keep close to the walls, moving as swiftly and as quietly as they can, but Doyoung is very aware of the footprints they leave in the snow and their stumbling pace is not nearly fast enough. Distant voices grow louder, quick footsteps hitting the hard ground come closer and closer and by the time they can see the southern bazaar in front of them, the Curug are close enough to see them as well.

Handing Hansol over to Donghyuk and telling them to continue, he presses close to the wall and holds his raygun at chest height and holds his breath as their pursuers round the corner a few dozen metres down the street. As the moon glints off their weapons, he takes aim and takes a breath. His first shot hits its mark, as does the second and by the third, their pursuers are firing back. He fires off two more bullets and the Curug soldiers are close enough now that he hears the cracking of their frozen bodies as they explode, and then, before the falling snow has set, they are alone again.

He runs to catch up, passing Jaemin and grabbing Hansol’s arm and they all but fall around the corner of the building, into the courtyard and into the body of a lone man. The sound of skin hitting skin resounds around them and Hansol grunts and falls into Doyoung, and then a familiar voice makes his heart stop in his chest.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to slap you I just was so surprised, I didn’t think you were going to run all into me like that I’m sorry,” the deep, soft voice of Doyoung’s favourite dreams washes over him and he struggles to get Hansol off him so he can see it with his own eyes. So he can be sure.

“Jaehyun?” he gasps once he is standing in front of the boy, and it is him there is no doubt. The same round face, the same curious eyes glinting in the moonlight, the same dimpled cheeks and the same stupidly soft hair. Jaehyun is alive, and he is whole and he is standing right in front of him. All Doyoung wants to do is to kiss him senseless.

But Doyoung is not a lucky man, and the universe is never on his side, and this time Jaehyun breaks _his_ heart with a few, simple words.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far, then I hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> *Thane = servant, attendant. It's not a word often used in Curug Tam, Luna uses it only to mock Lucas.  
> So, the n.o.c.t. regiment, it's almost nct, it's almost noct = noctis which is Latin and Luna is also Latin, which is why i decided on it, if anyone was curious (i really just wanted to share some of my process)
> 
> Anyway! Last chapter is coming soon!


	3. Inversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no recognition in Jaehyun's eyes, and Doyoung doesn't know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the final chapter!!! I'm so excited and so sad and uuuh so many feelings T_T
> 
> I hope you like it!

“What?”

 

Jaehyun looks at him, blankly.

 

There is no recognition in his eyes whatsoever and Doyoung doesn’t know what to feel. How can Jaehyun not know him? In the last ten years Jaehyun is the _only one_ who ever really knew him at all, even with all the misleading and secrecy from Doyoung, Jaehyun _knew_ him. It doesn’t make sense in his mind, but Jaehyun is the last thing the universe could take from him so in a way, it does. Jaehyun is there, standing docile within reach of his hands, but he is also so far away Doyoung doesn’t know where to begin looking.

“I’m sorry I don’t, I really don’t know you, and I’m so sorry if I should, I don’t know,” Jaehyun rambles on and what Doyoung had at first thought to be a flustered rush of embarrassment he realises now is the panicked babble of a very lost boy.

He feels a hesitant hand grip his wrist and looks sideways at Hansol and he knows what he is going to say before he even opens his mouth. The realisation having fallen on them both at the same time.

“His chip Doyoung, his memory chip,” Hansol murmurs and Doyoung barely nods his head, putting his hand over Hansol’s to signal he understands. The data chip in the back of Jaehyun’s head, that he had tried to remove that time only days before they left Taranjá. It feels like ages ago already. It must have been damaged in the cave in.

He looks at Donghyuk and his expressionless, masked face is turned towards him and Doyoung knows this is why Donghyuk was so determined to get them here. He already knew, all or part of it he can’t say, but Donghyuk knew.

“We can’t linger,” Donghyuk says just as Jaemin comes up beside him, sitting astride a hoverbike he must have found amongst the ruins. It’s one used mostly by peddlers, a big cart tacked onto the back of it to hold wares of all kinds, but for now will hold four grown men. It’s not ideal, if they were seen from above they would have no cover from the fire that would rain down on them, but it is by far better than walking. Donghyuk helps Hansol into the cart and clambers in after him and Doyoung turns his attention back to Jaehyun, holding a hand out to him palm facing up. He holds his breath and takes only a miniscule step forward, as careful as if he was approaching a frightened animal.

“I don’t know what you remember, but you used to trust me once,” he says, urgently but quiet and soft, “come with me. Please, it’s not safe here.”

Jaehyun looks at him, stares into his eyes and studies their depths and, as if proof that he is still Jaehyun, takes his offered hand and holds on tight.

 

*

*  *  *

*

 

It’s a tight fit and the bike swoops unsteadily under their weight, but Jaemin flies unhindered by all of it. And Doyoung can’t take his eyes off Jaehyun.

Sitting across from him, pushed so close together their legs tangle and bump against each other, he is beautiful and warm. He still looks lost, fingers tangled on top of his knees and restless head always moving in every direction, as if he can see anything outside the small space of the cart.

The streets widen, changing from the narrow concrete alleys of downtown to roads of polished stone with decorative hedges lining them on either side. The destruction struck here as well, every other building is crumbling it seems, but the white stone road is still clean, gleaming in the light of the moon. The search is still ongoing, occasionally the sound of a speeder sounds not far from them, but the further they get from the city centre the less frequent they become. Once they enter the industrial area on the outskirts of the Capital, only silence surrounds them. Doyoung is still on edge, but his heart beats slow in his chest.

“Where are we going?” Jaehyun asks, breaking the silence. He looks at Doyoung, searching for an answer in him. Looking for something to ground himself in, probably. Something concrete to replace the swirling mass of emptiness in his head. He wonders what it must be like, to forget everything you’ve ever learned, all your memories erased with the blink of an eye. To know nothing, except that you now know nothing. He wonders what it must be like to have no identity at all.

“Somewhere safe,” is all he says, not entirely sure himself.

Jaehyun’s eyes slowly fill with tears and he does nothing to stop them; Doyoung doubts he is even fully aware of them slipping down his cheeks. He doesn’t think they are sad tears, rather bitter, frustrated tears born of desperation.

He takes Jaehyun’s hands in his, rubs his thumbs over the backs of them and feels like crying himself when his hold is not returned, when Jaehyun’s fingers remain slack between his. He remembers a boy, a prince of the absolute best sort, who would take any opportunity just to touch him in the smallest ways. Now that boy sits solemnly across him, covered in veils of strangeness and restraint, as unfamiliar to him as _he_ is to his prince.

“Who are you?” Jaehyun asks in a whisper, his voice choked with small, silent sobs. Doyoung knows, reads between the lines of the innocuous question, that it’s not his name Jaehyun wants to know, or his origin, where he came from what he has done what he has learned. He wants, needs, to know who Doyoung is in relation to him. How he fits into the blankness of his mind, how many pages of memories does he own, how should his presence make him _feel_.

“I’m your friend,” Doyoung answers and Jaehyun’s fingers twitch against his.

“My closest friend?” he asks and Doyoung swallows hard. His throat is dry. _Your only friend_ he almost says, a voice in his head tempting him with the words. The same voice tells him to take the chance, mould Jaehyun as he needs, so that he will always _only_ be _his_.

“I was, for a while,” he says instead, opting for honesty for once in his life. “I hope I still am.”

It starts snowing more heavily, thick flakes falling all around them and dampening even the whizzing sounds of the engine underneath them. By morning the city will look different, more peaceful with all the death and destruction hidden under a blanket of white. A fitting end to the web of lies that has spanned an entire galaxy.

Jaehyun lurches, a sound like a dying animal escaping his mouth, before he leans over the railing and empties his stomach onto the road below.

“Stop!” Doyoung shouts to Jaemin, and he is gripping the back of Jaehyun’s jacket before he can even think to move. The hover bike jerks to a stand still, almost toppling both him and Jaehyun over the side. Jaehyun is shaking like a wilted leaf under his hands, gasping for air as he clings desperately to the rail. He is mumbling, Doyoung can hear him even if he can’t make out the words.

“Are you alright?” he whispers with his mouth pressed to the side of Jaehyun’s head. He shouldn’t be so close, doesn’t want to make it any worse for Jaehyun by invading his space, but he can’t help himself. He needs something to centre himself on as well, he needs Jaehyun. He strokes a hand up and down Jaehyun’s back, frowning when his fingers catch in several tears in the fabric of his jacket and he worries that the cold is seeping into his skin. It’s then he notices his own flimsy attire; the adrenaline has left his body running hot for so long, but it is bound to leave him in the end. He can only hope they are out of the cold before it happens.

“Jaehyun?” he whispers, but he still gets no response. Eventually Jaehyun rights himself, pushing his upper body back into the cart and wiping his mouth on the black sleeve of his jacket.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles behind his hand and Doyoung grips his shins gently, remaining on his knees as Jaemin starts the engine and continues down the road.

“What happened?” he asks, but Jaehyun only shakes his head. He is pale and shaking, his dark eyes stark in his white face and Doyoung looks him over in the light of the lampposts whizzing by. He must be overwhelmed, Doyoung can only imagine he is.

He looks at Hansol, still wrapped in the thick blanket and dozing, and Donghyuk, who is busying himself with wrapping his uncle even tighter inside its warmth, though his head is tilted enough towards them that Doyoung knows he is listening. When he looks back at Jaehyun, the other is already looking at him. His eyes are like lumps of coal they’re so dark, and Doyoung feels his stare penetrate his skin, clawing through his bones and right into the blackness in his soul. Jaehyun looks at him like someone who knows his darkest secrets where they swirl around his mind like a maelstrom. _Traitor,_ they whisper, _whore, enabler, murderer, liar and deceiver, brother killer._ There is no more good left in him, he knows that. He still wishes Jaehyun will never see it.

“Are you alright?” he asks and Jaehyun blinks, his penetrating stare turning soft and he starts to shake his head, but at the last second changes it to a nod. Doyoung notices anyway.

“It’s not far now,” Donghyuk’s voice interrupts the silence, and they both turn to look to the front, at the hill landscape surrounding them and the flickering lights in the far distance.

 

*

*  *  *

*

 

A century old, abandoned bunker is where they have been taken. Doyoung would estimate it is at least three hundred years old going by the primitive technology and the dullness of the design. The walls and floor and ceilings, even the doors, are a slate green colour and as blank as an untouched canvas. Jaemin opened the heavy door for them, but the second they were through he disappeared into the mountain. Doyoung was not sad to see him go.

It is quiet in the antechamber, no sound except for their breathing, and no sign of anyone having ever passed through it except for the scuffed up floor.

“Refugees,” he says, mostly to himself. Donghyuk answers him anyway.

“We managed to sound the alarm before the attack happened, a lot of people survived down here.” Doyoung wonders for a brief moment who _we_ are, but ultimately finds he simply does not care.

“Who’s _we_?” Hansol asks, standing like a half melted icicle, caved in on himself. Donghyuk holds him upright with one arm and pulls his mask off with a deep breath. It’s uncanny, how much of Johnny there is in his face. Doyoung hadn’t seen the similarities in Mark, but Donghyuk is most definitely his father’s son. His dark skin and upturned nose is as indistinguishable from Johnny as are his milky eyes.

“Street orphans mostly,” Donghyuk mumbles and Doyoung can’t help but notice how different he sounds, younger and more subdued.

“You’re not an orphan Donghyuk,” Hansol says and fumbles with a hand in the air for several seconds before he finds Donghyuk’s shoulder.

“I may as well have been.”

There’s something Doyoung recognises. The feeling that you have been abandoned. He felt it first on Curug Tam, when he returned to Gried with Hansol to find it empty. And then later when Taeyong was tired of playing with him and left him to the proverbial wolves. He spares a thought to Heechul. The man is most likely dead already.

“I wanted to see your face,” Hansol’s whisper brings him back. He is touching Donghyuk’s face with his fingertips. “I wanted to tell your father what you looked like.”

“He looks like Johnny,” Doyoung whispers, his throat is too tight to speak any louder than that. It’s his fault, he took that from Hansol, but even still Hansol smiles at him in gratitude, as if nothing bad has happened between them since they met in that magical, snow-covered valley, ten years ago.

A door swings open on rusted hinges, squeaking terribly, and Jaehyun startles so violently Doyoung reaches behind himself to grip his hand. Jaehyun has strayed no more than a couple feet from him since getting off the bike, and Doyoung is hyper-aware of his physical proximity.

“Donghyuk, you made it,” a voice, breathy with relief, sounds and a woman walks into the room, followed closely by a small, white dog. Tall and pretty and dressed for combat, she crosses the room in three long strides and stops in front of Donghyuk and Hansol. She fusses over Donghyuk, looking him over and patting him repeatedly on the shoulder, before she turns to Hansol and clicks her tongue in apparent worry.

“You need some tea, the both of you,” she says before she bends and picks up the dog walking circles around her feet and pushes it into Donghyuk’s hands. “And some therapy.”

She continues talking, and fussing, but Doyoung pays her no mind. He is more concerned about the shorter woman who came with her, simply because she hasn’t taken her eyes off Jaehyun since she arrived. She is just as armed as her louder counterpart, two guns strapped to her belt and a rifle slung over her back, but she stands at ease, as if she has no fear of anyone in this room. And she is staring wide-eyed at Jaehyun hiding behind Doyoung’s back, still shaking by the sound of his ragged breath.

“I don’t believe it,” she says at last, and as if her voice was a switch it mutes any other sound in the room.

“You’re alive, I can’t believe it,” she stumbles forward but jerks to a stop when Doyoung turns to her, standing in between her and Jaehyun and staring her down.

“Jaehyun,” she doesn’t let him deter her, looking around him at Jaehyun and _waving_. “Don’t you recognise me? I’m Yerim.”

Doyoung remembers her, and her unthreatening demeanor is enough to put him at ease, but clearly it does the opposite to Jaehyun. His breath is turning quick and labored and when Doyoung looks at him he can see his throat working as he attempts to swallow and his eyes flit restlessly until they find Doyoung’s. His mouth moves, but no words come out and Doyoung grips his trembling hand and answers for him.

“He can’t, he doesn’t remember.”

He watches a light go out in Jaehyun’s eyes, a single shred of hope Doyoung’s words have extinguished.

“He’s bleeding,” Yerim points out, wisely keeping her distance. She’s right, the back of Jaehyun’s neck as well as a large portion of his jacket is stained in red. It would have been impossible to see in the dark, but Doyoung curses himself for not noticing anyway.

Jaehyun doesn’t seem to be aware of it, and he lets himself be moved around by Doyoung as he tears gently at the largest rip in his jacket until the back is open. When he pulls at the thin woollen shirt under it, Jaehyun jerks away with a hiss. The fabric is plastered to his skin, soaked with blood, and by pulling at it he has aggravated the wound stretching down his back.

Doyoung spares a glance at Hansol and then he turns to address Yerim.

“Do you have a doctor? This needs to be looked at.” He didn’t have to ask. Yerim is already walking into bunker, waving a hand for them to follow. Jaehyun was standing fine on his own, but as they walk Doyoung wraps his arm around his waist to make sure he doesn’t stumble and fall, like blood loss is wont to make one do. It’s a nice excuse anyway.

“They’ve set up in the medical ward, we have a whole team of them, doctors and nurses. They’ve been busy to say the least. Maybe …” she stops and looks searchingly over Jaehyun’s face, “not tell them who he is.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Doyoung says and wraps Jaehyun closer in his arms when the other’s sad mumbles of _but who am I_ reaches his ears.

“You’re Jaehyun,” he whispers, meeting Jaehyun’s gaze for only a second. Jaehyun’s eyes are locked on the side of his face and Doyoung is forced to look away at where they’re going, leading the way for the both of them.

_Jaehyun_ , he mumbles first, then, _Doyoung_. A shiver goes through him at the sound of his name in Jaehyun’s voice. It feels like a lifetime since he last heard it.

They reach the medical ward without encountering anyone, but the second they step through the door it is teeming with life all around them. Almost every bed is occupied, from small kids with tear-stained faces to the grey and wrinkled with resigned expressions. All of them suffering by the hands of his people.

Yerim leads them to an unoccupied bed, patting the surgically made sheets with a hesitant smile directed at Jaehyun.

“Wait here, I’ll find a doctor,” she says and after another second to stare she is off.

Doyoung helps Jaehyun onto the bed and holds his hands with his while he listens to Jaehyun’s continued mumblings. He hears his own name several times and every time Jaehyun’s fingers tighten a little around his.

Yerim comes back a good handful of minutes later with a nurse in pale blue scrubs. He looks young, barely older than Doyoung, but he goes to work with no uncertainty. Cutting open the rest of Jaehyun’s jacket, the nurse instructs Doyoung to pull it off at the front, leaving Jaehyun in only the thin wool shirt.

“How are you doing Jaehyun?” the nurse asks lightly, while pulling gently at the back of Jaehyun’s shirt.

“My name is Kun, I’m gonna take a look at your back now,” his voice is soothing and Jaehyun’s eyes fall closed under his gentle, clinical touch. His face pinches and his hands grip Doyoung’s tight when Kun removes the shirt, ungluing it from his blood-soaked back and the open gash stretching down to his shoulder blades.

“This needs to be cleaned, I’ll be right back,” Kun disappears into the crowd and Doyoung looks after him, so is startled when something heavy thuds against his chest. It’s Jaehyun’s head, resting limply against him while the rest of Jaehyun’s body shakes with a fine tremble. He looks at Yerim, his brow furrowing at the indescribable look in her eyes, and clears his throat.

“He threw up earlier, could you get him some water to wash his mouth out?” he asks and Yerim nods rapidly. Doyoung sighs when she leaves and looks back down at the top of Jaehyun’s head.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he whispers, caving to the urge to press his mouth to Jaehyun’s hair. It’s dusty and matted and some of it is hard with dried blood, but it still feels so soft against his skin.

“Doyoung,” his name is mumbled into his chest along with Jaehyun’s tears soaking his thin shirt, “I don’t even know what happened.” The despondent tone in Jaehyun’s voice digs deep inside him and Doyoung feels the cold finally seep past his skin to squeeze around his heart.

“Here we go,” the nurse startles them both back to reality with his sudden presence, “this might sting a little, but I need to clean it to see what I’m working with here.”

Jaehyun makes no move to sit up, rather buries his face even more in Doyoung’s chest and holds his breath as the nurse dabs at his wounds with a disinfected cloth.

“You have some abrasions on the skin, several cuts but they’re not too deep, the only one of any significant concern is the wound in your neck. You’ve been very lucky,” Kun says once Jaehyun’s back is cleaned. Jaehyun sniffs and Doyoung can imagine he must think he has been anything but lucky.

“This will need stitches, I’ll give you some local anesthesia so you won’t feel a … thing,” the change in the nurse’s voice draws Doyoung’s attention from running his hand through Jaehyun’s hair. Kun’s face is still as a statue, his hand hovering in the air right next to Jaehyun’s neck and Doyoung knows instantly what he has discovered.

He hadn’t thought to check if the chip could still be there, and he curses himself loudly in his head for his slip. There is no way the nurse won’t know exactly what he is looking at; it had been publicized loudly all over the Keratas system when the chip was created and put to use. _The keepers of our history_ , the statement had described the royal family as at the time, sixteen years ago.

Wrapping his fingers around the handle of his gun, Doyoung looks the nurse in the eye with as much conviction as he can, to show him how serious he is.

“You would die first.”

His voice is low, and silky smooth. The nurse shivers in fear and Doyoung knows there’s no need for him to say anything else.

“I won’t,” the nurse gasps, his eyes flicking to Yerim who is standing with her back to them, listening to every word passed between them, but pretending otherwise. Her hand is resting on one of her guns for the first time since Doyoung met her. He is grateful for her silent support.

The nurse leaves once again, not as cheerful as he was before, and Jaehyun is breathing deeply into Doyoung’s chest seeming blissfully unaware of what transpired above his head.

“Thank you,” Doyoung whispers and Yerim turns to look at him and then down at Jaehyun and she reaches out as if to touch her old friend’s shoulder but doesn’t.

“He was my best friend, I won’t let anyone harm him,” she keeps her voice low as well, locking their words in the bubble around this hospital bed. She hands him the cup of water as well as a small metallic bowl she had tucked under her arm and they stand in silence while Doyoung instructs Jaehyun to wash his mouth with the water and spit into the bowl.

“How did you survive? Jaehyun told me you were sentenced to die with your family,” he asks once Yerim has disposed of the bowl into the arms of a passing nurse. Jaehyun’s mumbling begins anew at the sound of his name, repeats of his name mixed with unintelligible words, but like before he is mumbling Doyoung’s name to himself before long.

“It was the PPP, they had people on the inside that got me out. I wasn’t the only child sentenced to death by the king, there’s a handful more of us in this bunker alone, and we were all saved by the PPP. Of course, after that they didn’t care about us anymore and the ones who didn’t join ended up on the street, orphans.”

Yerim fiddles with the sheets at the end of the bed, tugging until it comes loose from the mattress.

“I probably would have been dead anyway if it wasn’t for Joy. She’s _our_ General, I guess you could say,” Yerim looks like she wants to say more but is interrupted by the nurse returning with a small syringe and an unmarked tube as well as needle and thread for suturing all balanced on a shiny metal tray. He sets it down on the side table next to the bed, his eyes flickering between Doyoung’s face and the gun sticking out of his pocket.

“I’ll administer the anesthesia,” he says, a lot more quiet and subdued than he was before but Doyoung doesn’t care if he frightens the man as long as he does his job right. Jaehyun barely reacts at the prick of the needle in his skin, distracting himself with mumbles of Doyoung’s name and words he himself might not even understand. As the nurse busies himself with preparing the needle and thread while the anesthesia works, Doyoung runs his hand through Jaehyun’s hair over and over with a soothing rhythm.

“I can’t take it out,” the nurse says, not looking at either of them. “I don’t know what it would do if I severed it completely from his brain.”

Doyoung doesn’t know if the nurse if expecting him to say something, so he says nothing at all. He knows the chip itself is in Jaehyun’s neck, knows its exact location from licking and sucking and kissing over the slight bump more times than he can count, but it is connected to his brain with thousands of microscopic tendrils, not unlike Taeyong’s had been. The only difference being that Jaehyun’s, with its purely technological makeup, can’t heal itself.

“Just close the wound,” he says when the nurse looks at him expectantly. Yerim moves to the other side of the bed, giving the nurse a hard look before she sets her eyes on the open wound in Jaehyun’s neck. She means to watch him, to make sure he doesn’t do anything except for what Doyoung told him to. He doesn’t know this man, but Yerim’s distrust makes it obvious to him that he has some reason to hate the Jungs, and letting him work on Jaehyun is a risk. But it’s one he will take if it means no one else will know who Jaehyun really is.

The nurse works quickly after that, stitching the wound together efficiently and wrapping it in gauze and once he is done he looks at Doyoung with intense distaste burning in his eyes.

“The tube contains an antibiotic ointment, use it on the cuts on his back. It will help them heal as well as protect against bacteria invading the wounds,” his words are clipped and he stalks off the second he has said what he needs to.

“He won’t say anything,” Yerim says, lighter now that the nurse is gone. “He knows the people here, he knows what they would do to him.” She means it to be comforting he is sure, but the reminder that Jaehyun is no safer here than in the Curug infested streets only serves to put Doyoung even more on edge.

“Come one, you can stay in my room for now. I’ll get you some clothes and something to eat,” Yerim takes the ointment from the tray and waits at the foot of the bed for Doyoung to help Jaehyun to his feet. Jaehyun leans heavily on him once they’re standing next to each other, and Doyoung wraps his arm around his waist once again, careful not to touch one of the countless cuts marring Jaehyun’s back. He thinks something has shifted within Jaehyun, between them, but he won’t question it if it means he gets to hold Jaehyun close and smell the warm scent of his skin.

 

Yerim takes them to a small, square-shaped room, sparsely furnished and even sparser decorated, and leaves them with a bundle of clothes she had grabbed from a storage closet and the promise of a hot meal.

“I need to put this on your back,” Doyoung whispers and gently frees himself from Jaehyun’s gripping hands. The mumbling has stopped and the eerie quiet surrounding Jaehyun forces him to fill it with his own voice.

“Are you alright?” he asks but gets no reply. It’s almost like Jaehyun has entered a trance, where he can’t hear him or even see him as he only sits with his head bowed and his stare locked on the floor. So Doyoung leaves him be, opens the tube of ointment instead and slathers it generously over even the smallest wound on Jaehyun’s back.

“I don’t know who you are,” Jaehyun says at long last, when Doyoung is finished and has sat down on the bed next to him. The words are like a punch in the gut and Doyoung has a practiced reassurance on the tip of his tongue to draw them both away from that kind of conversation. But Jaehyun sits up straight and it’s clear he has something on his mind, something he has been working out for a long while, so he keeps his silence and lets him speak.

“I don’t know you, I don’t know who you are, but I feel like I should, _you_ make me feel like I should, like there’s something there, and I don’t even know myself but for some reason that doesn’t make me feel as bad as the fact that I don’t know you.”

His voice is quiet and thin, barely there, and he breathes heavily afterwards as if saying the words caused him great physical strain.

“Tell me who you are, please. I need to know,” Jaehyun pleads as he looks him imploringly in the eye, and Doyoung knows he will tell him anything he needs to know. He wants to do it. Wants desperately to leave all the lies and deceptions behind. And even if it weren't so, he has a feeling Jaehyun would know if he lied, memory loss be damned.

“Okay, I'll tell you everything, but it's going to take some time.”

Jaehyun looks at him and shifts on the bed to sit more comfortably and Doyoung’s gaze is drawn to his naked chest.

“You should get dressed first,” he says, and repeats, more urgently, when he touches Jaehyun’s skin and feels how cold it is, “you should get dressed”. Jaehyun doesn’t seem to notice, not the cold nor his wounded back as he easily pulls the shirt Doyoung hands him over his head, and there is no modesty when he changes out of his trousers. Doyoung tries not to watch and distracts himself with changing his own clothes, but he sees enough to notice the bruises painting Jaehyun’s legs a mottled blue and purple and he wonders how close Jaehyun was to dying when the palace fell on him.

A small part of Doyoung had hoped Jaehyun would be distracted enough to drop the subject, that he would feel the exhaustion set in with a change of clothes, but he is waiting expectantly for him, curled up near the head of the bed.

“Before I - you need to know that … there are things about me that when you found out made you not trust me, made you push me away, rightfully so, and there are some things you might be better off not knowing.”

He watches Jaehyun’s eyes move as they trace the pattern of thread on the cream coloured sheets, and waits for him to say the words he can sense him trying to piece together.

“I’m not better off not knowing,” he whispers eventually and Doyoung takes it as his cue to start. It is a long story and telling it will take time, time which he may not have in this place, but he doubts Jaehyun has any understanding of any of that at all. Even so, he refuses to leave anything out, he won’t give Jaehyun the abridged version of the events that most shaped him as a person. He suddenly aches for the Jaehyun that was, the one who knew who he was and who knew his friends, the one who fought for his friends and was ready to devote his life to make sure no one would suffer like Ten did. It truly hits him then, that Jaehyun has lost all of that, and may never get it back.

“Well, the first thing you need to know is that you’re Jung Jaehyun, Crown Prince of Taranjá. And I was your aide.”

He tells his story chronologically, starting with being born a prince of Curug Tam and everything that brought him into the service of the Taranjian royal family. Tells him about the _Libertas_ and the PPP and being a double agent, tells him about falling in love with the prince he was meant to kill.

Jaehyun listens closely, chewing on his bottom lip and staring resolutely at Doyoung’s knee propped up on the bed. When Doyoung talks about their time together in the palace is the first time he gets a reaction from him as Jaehyun clutches the shirt over his chest, like his heart is giving him pain.

It’s different, having Jaehyun know that he was loved and that he gave love in return while also knowing everything that Doyoung kept from him at the time. It’s what he wishes could have been.

He even talks about Taeyong and the last time he saw him, and he tells Jaehyun the same thing he did when they were standing in the ancient Acropolis on Runtah, that being around Jaehyun makes him a danger to everyone else.

“I love you too much and that doesn’t sound like a negative thing, but that’s what it has become.”

He watches Jaehyun closely when he reaches the part about Ten, expecting some kind of reaction, but Jaehyun shows very little. Until, that is, Doyoung tells him about his sickness caused by the cowardly act of slow massacre performed by his father.

“Are you better now?” he interrupts for the first time in what must have been at least an hour of Doyoung talking, seemingly unaffected by the knowledge of just how gruesome his father had been. He doesn’t know why that is so important to him, maybe Jaehyun himself doesn’t know, but he puts it down to curiosity at the fact that he is still sitting here.

“I met my brother, just before I found you. He gave me the cure so yes, I’m better now.” It’s all he plans to say on the matter. What he did after will be his only secret. He has a chance to get Jaehyun back and he won’t ruin it with things he doesn’t need to know.

“They’re here, now,” he says as he can see the gears turning behind Jaehyun’s eyes.

“The people who were chasing us, and who caused all the destruction to the city, they were my people.”

The distance between them has shrunk in the last hour, but he doesn’t know for sure if he is the one who moved, or Jaehyun, or if they have gravitated towards each other as time have passed.

“You were here to help take the city back from the _Libertas_ , but you didn’t have the chance to do so before the Curug invaded. You survived only because of your team leader.”

“Captain Zhang,” Jaehyun mumbles and Doyoung looks at him with wide-eyed surprise.

“How do you know his name?”

“I don’t, but when I woke up I was holding a piece of cloth in my hand that said _Captain Zhang_. I must have dropped it.”

They are both quiet after that. Doyoung doesn’t know what else he can say as he doesn’t know the details of what happened after he left Svava. All he can do now is give Jaehyun time to process all that he has been told, and hope that the outcome of _them_ will be good.

“The thing is,” Jaehyun starts after a long while and his voice is so quiet Doyoung is forced to lean even closer to hear him.

“You can tell me all of this, and I can know it, but I don’t feel it. It doesn’t connect with me at all, any of it. Except for you.” Doyoung won’t deny the shiver that goes through his entire body.

“Maybe it’s because you’re here, or maybe my feelings for you are just that strong, but I only,” he doesn’t finish, instead he leans close, balancing himself with both hands on Doyoung’s thigh and kisses him. It lasts no more than a couple seconds and Jaehyun’s face is drawn with guilt when he pulls away.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t do that,” he whispers and draws a sharp breath when Doyoung’s hands wrap around his wrists and chains him to the spot.

“Don’t be,” he says, his voice thick, and without stopping for a second to consider how bad an idea this is, he leans in and connects their lips again. Jaehyun made the first move, he tells himself. He shouldn’t feel guilty for taking advantage of that.

Jaehyun feels the same in his arms, substantial and strong but most of all warm, and he can’t stop his hands from wandering, not when Jaehyun moans into his mouth and digs his fingers into his thigh. Doyoung cups Jaehyun’s cheek and pulls him closer while he licks into his mouth, and he knows he is getting carried away but he doesn’t want to stop.

“I feel you,” Jaehyun breathes into his mouth and Doyoung pulls back a tiny bit so he won’t have to talk around his tongue. “Every time I look at you, I feel you.”

Doyoung drowns his moan in Jaehyun’s mouth and tugs him even closer with a gentle grip on his hips. Jaehyun doesn’t need any more to press against him, to tangle their feet an inch above the floor, to cup the back of Doyoung’s head with both hands. It’s so familiar, the way Jaehyun kisses is no different now than it was before, still the same enthusiastic, but so very pliable, heat.

How long they sit there like that, wrapped up in each other finally back where no one else matters in the world, Doyoung can’t say. But they are broken apart by Yerim returning to the room with two bowls of steaming stew.

“Hope you like stew, it’s the only way we can make the food taste good down here,” she says cheerfully as she sets the tray down on the only other surface in the room. She looks at Doyoung with disapproval shining like beacons out of her eyes; clearly she knows exactly what she walked in on.

“Sorry it took me so long, there was some trouble in the mess hall.”

Jaehyun was looking longingly at the food before, but now he sits up straight at the same time Doyoung does, growing tense at the mention of trouble. Something that would have meant very little to him if Doyoung had never told him his true identity.

“Donghyuk wants to leave, we want him to stay,” Yerim explains, backing up towards the door.

“He wants to go home,” Doyoung shrugs, a rather obvious fact to him.

“Also, Hansol wants to see you,” Yerim stills with her hand on the handle, looking at Doyoung expectantly for an answer.

Turning to Jaehyun, he presses a kiss to his temple and runs his hand down the back of his head, frowning when he meets stiff strands of bloodstained hair.

“Eat, then try and sleep. I’ll be back soon,” he whispers and leaves, following Yerim down identical hallways to the large, bustling mess hall.

 

She leads him to a table tucked up against one of the thick columns, in the very middle of the room. Hansol and Donghyuk are sitting on one side, the former eating silently from a bowl of the same stew Yerim brought them, while the latter is conversing heatedly with the people sitting opposite of them. It doesn’t take him long to realise one of them is Jaemin. His russet hair and constant shaking is as recognisable as Hansol’s long, lanky form.

The last boy is unfamiliar, black hair and dark eyes and dressed in the yellow school uniform belonging to eleventh graders on Taranjá. He looks to be attempting to hold Jaemin back with both hands wrapped around Jaemin’s upper arm and Doyoung can only scoff at the uselessness of the action.

“I’m gonna go eat,” he hears Yerim say but pays her little mind and she is gone from his side in the next second.

Hansol looks a lot better, he realises when he moves closer. While he was busy getting Jaehyun fixed up, Hansol must have been to see a doctor himself. There are bandages over his eyes and casts on both his hands, but he is still able to hold a spoon so Doyoung hopes the damage isn’t as bad as it looks.

“This wasn’t part of the deal,” Jaemin hisses at Donghyuk, the first understandable part of their discussion and it catches the attention of Doyoung’s curiosity.

“I help you get them, and you tell me where I can find Dr. Moon. That was the agreement!”

“Jaemin please, you need to calm down,” the unnamed boy pleads, and to Doyoung’s surprise his voice seems to calm Jaemin’s firecracker mood.

He sits down hesitantly next to Hansol, still on edge around the miracle boy.

“How is he?” Hansol asks quietly, content to ignore the still heated discussion going on right next to him.

“Better than would be expected. His physical wounds aren’t that bad either,” Doyoung murmurs, keeping one eye on Hansol and the other on the ticking time bomb.

“And how bad is it?”

“Episodic memory only, which is the silver lining I guess.” He hesitates to reveal what happened between him and Jaehyun, but ultimately decides he can trust Hansol to understand.

“He still feels …” he tries, but can’t find the right words to describe it. In the end he doesn’t have to as Hansol does it for him.

“He still has feelings for you. Even if he has no memory of what caused them, they are still there. It happens. I’m frankly not surprised.”

Doyoung mulls it over while Hansol eats, and only looks up when he hears a chair screech across the floor followed by the entire hall falling silent. Jaemin is standing, fists clenched on top of the table, and Doyoung’s hand goes instinctively to the gun in his pocket. He undoes the safety to be sure.

“You gave me your word,” Jaemin’s voice is a low hiss and his eyes flick around the room, finally becoming aware of the dozens of frightened eyes watching his every move. He pulls his chair back in and slumps into it, hiding his face in his hands.

“We’ll do it,” the unnamed boy says after another handful of seconds and Jaemin’s head shoots out of his hands and Doyoung can see the obvious fear in his eyes.

“Jeno it’s not safe! _We_ can get off the planet no problem on our own, no one is looking for us, but them!” Jaemin shrinks into himself when Jeno shakes his head.

“This is exactly why you will do it! You keep saying you want to be good so fucking be good!” Jeno’s voice is a low hiss and even if Doyoung is meeting him for the first time, it sounds out of place coming from this boy. Jaemin doesn’t say anything is response and Donghyuk must take his silence as resignation and turns to address Doyoung.

“We’re going to Runtah tomorrow. There are refugee shuttles leaving every other hour, on the hour, from the east terminal. It’s not far from here. I nicked this,” he holds up a painfully familiar device then, “from the invaders earlier tonight. Hopefully it will be enough to get you out of here undetected.”

He hands the thin metal frame to Doyoung who takes it with hesitant hands. He can’t stop the way his memory flashes back to earlier that same night, and the image of him torturing Hansol makes him sick all over again.

“What about Hansol?” he asks, unable to take his eyes off the mythical device.

“We’ll be two Panacean, that’s already one more than they know of so hopefully that will be enough to get us through. Anyway, _you’re_ the one they’re looking for.”

“I already got a face, all you have to do is put it on,” Donghyuk says it as if nothing has ever been simpler. He couldn’t be more wrong.

He doesn’t want to put on another man’s face, he doesn’t want to spend another second with the device in his hands. He wants to crush the fragile frame into a thousand pieces and be done with it. Mostly he wants to tell them to take Jaehyun and leave, go back to the cabin by the sea in Thíva where it is safe. But he’s not that selfless.

“Anything else?” he asks, wanting to get back to Jaehyun already.

“We leave at ten-hundred hours, try and get some sleep,” it’s Hansol’s soft, caring voice that sends him off and Doyoung leaves with a single nod of his head.

 

“It’s me,” he softly announces his presence as he slips through the door of the room they have been given, expecting to find Jaehyun asleep on the bed. What he finds instead is an eerily familiar scene of Jaehyun bent over the small sink in the corner, gripping the edge with blood slowly trickling down his neck.

“I was trying to wash my hair,” he offers for an explanation when Doyoung clicks his tongue in worry at the sight of the undone bandages. Fortunately none of the stitches have been torn and the gauze easily sticks to Jaehyun’s skin again when Doyoung presses on top of it to stop the bleeding.

“Let me help,” he murmurs, gently pushing on the back of Jaehyun’s head so he’ll lean closer to the tap and he slowly, careful not to wet the bandages, pours water from his cupped hand over Jaehyun’s hair. It runs red down his neck and Doyoung decides then that red is his least favourite colour on Jaehyun.

“All done,” he whispers when the water runs clear and Jaehyun’s hair is plastered to his neck, a dark contrast to his pale skin. He uses the towel to pat him dry and holds Jaehyun steady with one hand while he slowly pushes himself upright again. Washing Jaehyun’s hair had felt somehow more intimate than kissing him, and Doyoung is unnaturally warm under his clothes.

“Thank you,” Jaehyun’s voice is as quiet as his when he turns to look at him, standing perfectly still as Doyoung dries his hair.

“Did you do a lot of this?” he asks, referring to the time when Doyoung was Jaehyun’s aide. Doyoung smiles to himself at the countless memories.

“Yes, a _lot_. Sometimes you did it to me as well,” he adds to see Jaehyun smile at the memory he once had.

He can’t help but notice how Jaehyun still acts like a prince. The way he stands, the way he walks. He had attributed Jaehyun’s lack of consideration for the world around him to his recent trauma and consequent memory loss, but in truth, Jaehyun had been like that before everything as well. So used to everyone living their lives around him, always getting out of his way, always making things easier for him. Doyoung had once taken advantage of that.

Had counted on Jaehyun’s ignorance of the real world and real relationships to hide the fact that theirs was not a necessarily good one.

“We should get some sleep, we’re going back to Thíva tomorrow, or today I don’t really know what time it is,” Doyoung steers Jaehyun gently towards the bed, but stays to at least splash some water in his face. He has no idea how he looks like, but he can imagine it’s not all that good.

“You can take the bed,” he says, falling quiet and following obediently when Jaehyun tugs him by the hand. He doesn’t know where he would have slept if not on the bed as the only chair in the room is a small, metal clap chair, but he didn’t want to assume it was alright.

“I don’t know if I can sleep,” Jaehyun whispers once they are lying in bed, on their sides and facing each other in the almost dark room.

“Then we don’t sleep,” Doyoung whispers back, but he can see Jaehyun’s eyes drooping, exhaustion slowly winning him over.

“Doyoung,” Jaehyun mumbles, simply voicing his name to himself, and Doyoung is dying to know what goes on in Jaehyun’s mind when he does that. Wants to know if there are things Jaehyun might remember, but that his memory loss makes him doubt is even real. Does he feel the familiarity of this scene? Does he long for his favourite foods? Or the sight of the ice flowers hanging like vines from the mountain?

Does he crave Doyoung’s touch with the same intensity he used to?

He doesn’t know how it happens, he only knows he is the one to initiate it, but Jaehyun’s mouth feels too good under his to ever stop. He tells himself he is too happy to have Jaehyun safe in his arms, that he is too relieved that their story is so close to a happy ending, that he loves Jaehyun that much. And he remembers Jaehyun’s words from earlier and realises how tragically applicable they are to his own state of mind. Because he can tell himself all of this, but for some reason, he can’t feel it.

 

*

*  *  *

*

 

Doyoung jerks awake some time later when loud knocking invades his sleep. Jaehyun is sprawled on top of his chest, still deep asleep, and Doyoung takes care not to wake him as he slips out from under him.

The boy with the school uniform, Jeno he thinks his name was, stands with his fist raised, his eyes growing wide like saucers when Doyoung swings the door open.

“Sorry,” he says, blinking rapidly. “Donghyuk told me to wake you.”

He has a backpack slung over one shoulder, burnt orange with cat prints on the straps, and a thick winter coat secured in his elbow. Doyoung would think it was cute, if he wasn’t still half asleep.

“He said to meet in the antechamber,” Jeno blurts and then he runs off, presumably to find his mutant friend.

Doyoung closes the door quietly behind himself and shuffles tiredly back to the bed. His bones ache with exhaustion and the small amount of sleep he did get has only made it worse. His eyes are dry and itchy, the skin of his face stiff from the tears he shed once Jaehyun fell asleep, only a handful of hours before. Crying was an odd experience, considering his current state of mind. The many reasons for his tears are obvious to him, but the emptiness he feels, the distance between his mind and heart if he were to be poetic, is still so insurmountable he fails to see the logic in them. Jaehyung told him once that tears are cathartic. _They cleanse the soul of things that wish to contamine it_ , he had said in the way that Doyoung knew he was quoting something he read in a book. Jaehyun did that a lot.

 

He slumps onto the edge of the mattress and watches Jaehyun’s back rise and fall with every breath he takes. They hadn’t done anything but kiss before Jaehyun had fallen asleep, he had been too disturbed by his sudden realisation and they had both been too tired to even hold their heads up for long. He is loathe to wake Jaehyun; as his eyes flit over the relaxed features he has long since memorised he wishes he could lie back down, curl up around Jaehyun and shelter him from anything else the universe might see fit to throw at him. But he knows he can never fully relax until Jaehyun is back where he belongs. Not in some lonely palace, not a bustling planet museum, not this old and cold war bunker. He thinks of thick log walls and vaulted ceilings. Of the cabbage patch in the back and the orange trees in the garden, and the small pebble beach spilling into the sea through a limestone bottleneck. He thinks of Hansol and Johnny, and Mark and Donghyuk, and of the family they have a chance to make. He wants that, he knows it, and some day, he will feel it to. All wounds need time to heal.

 

“Jaehyun,” he shakes Jaehyun’s leg and speaks softly. He doesn’t wake, but Doyoung is reluctant to be any harsher. He can’t say how Jaehyun will react to waking up again, if he will handle it well or if the haze of memory loss will hit him strong once again. For all he knows, Jaehyun might not even retain the new memories he has created so far. The thought makes him nauseous.

“Jaehyun, wake up,” he says closer to Jaehyun’s ear and runs his hand through his mussed up hair. Jaehyun wakes slowly with a groan, rubbing his cheek over the pillow. The familiar picture makes Doyoung smile. How many times has he woken Jaehyun up in the early morning? Every day for two years and yet it is not nearly enough.

“Come on, we have to leave soon.”

Jaehyun rolls onto his back, seems to think better of it and curls up on his side instead, kneading the stiff sheets with his fingers while he blinks blearily up at Doyoung.

“Doyoung?” he mumbles and instantly puts Doyoung’s worries at rest.

“Yeah, we have to go,” he whispers and brushes a wayward strand of hair from Jaehyun’s face.

It doesn’t take them long to get ready, pulling fresh shoes on their feet and wrapping themselves in thick winter coats to ward off the chill that seeps into the walls of even this mountain bunker. Jaehyun is watching him, Doyoung can feel his gaze follow his every move; not a new thing in any way, but one that never used to make him uncomfortable before.

“Ready?” he asks and Jaehyun jerks, as if Doyoung’s voice startled him out of a deep thought. He nods quietly, stands with his hands softly clenched at his sides and waits. Doyoung makes to leave the room when he remembers the mask. It sits innocently on the small desk against the wall, along with the bowls from their dinner a good handful of hours earlier. He feels sick just by looking at it, but still he takes it in his fist, treating it with far more care than it deserves.

“Come on,” he says and brushes past Jaehyun, holding the door open for him before taking his hand and guiding him down the identical hallways as best as he can remember. They find the antechamber quickly enough. They’re the last ones there.

“Finally,” Donghyuk huffs and disappears outside almost as soon as Doyoung and Jaehyun walks through the door. Jaemin and Jeno are standing off to the side, their hands linked, and Doyoung notices with more than a little relief that Jaemin looks a lot more at ease now.

Instead of the measly cart they traveled in last night, a large, four-wheeled car waits for them outside in the snow. It’s an old model, he would even say ancient, and its dark green colouring and military look tells him it belongs to the facility they are finally leaving behind.

“Why does it have wheels?” Jaehyun whispers over his shoulder and Doyoung almost laughs. Any semblance of a memory Jaehyun shows he has plants a little seed of hope inside him. There is a driver in the car waiting for them and they quickly clamber inside and strap themselves in.

The road is a lot bumpier when they’re not hovering a foot above it, but Jaehyun is asleep against the door in a matter of minutes. Nothing of what Doyoung has told him seems to have put any weight on his shoulders or his mind. In some ways, that’s a good thing.

 

When they reach the east terminal close to noon, there are no more than a couple dozen people walking about and most of them are Curug soldiers. Doyoung isn’t surprised. They had driven for almost two hours, mostly through ice-covered mountain landscapes impossible to cross on foot, and no Taranjian in their right mind would ever attempt to do so. The cold so far from the city centre, where the city-wide tunnel system of heat always left the air a little warmer than the rest of the planet, becomes unsurvivable after a while. An unlike the Curug whose bodies have been built to sustain them in severe cold since the dawn of their evolution, the Taranjian people are settlers, immigrants who have merely adapted to their surroundings.

The metal frame is tight against his temples when he puts it on, and by the time he pulls the fur-lined hood over his head another’s face is staring back at the world around him. He doesn’t know what he expected, but wearing the metamorphosis mask is nothing like what he could have imagined. He is so much more aware of it than he had thought he would be. Nothing looks the same, all of it everywhere he looks is glazed over with a green tint. The snow outside the windows, Jaemin’s hair, Jaehyun’s face, even his own hands. He wonders if the person whose face he is borrowing have green eyes.

The world looks slightly twisted, doesn’t quite seem real, and he understands now how easy it must have been for that unnamed man to torture Hansol. The mask creates a very convincing illusion of disattachment.

The doors have barely shut behind them before the driver takes off, driving back the road they came from at far greater speeds than he ever used on the journey there. Doyoung can’t really blame him. The Curug soldiers are heavily armed and seem overly suspicious of anyone.

“Form a line!” One barks, gesticulating with his rifle. Another joins him, grunting at them and pointing with a stiff hand at the check-point set up in front of the terminal entrance. It’s an odd-looking building. Modern and sleek and out of place in the wild terrain.

The guards pay him no mind, but he is not surprised. He knows better than anyone how convincing this mask is. And anyway, they are too distracted by the sight of two Panacean in their midst. Most, if not all, of them have probably never even seen _one_ before.

“Where are you going?” one soldier asks, a woman maybe a couple years older than him. She sounds more curious than interrogative.

“Melos,” Hansol answers pleasantly, but Doyoung can see his fingers grip tighter around Donghyuk’s arm.

“What are you doing in Melos?” the woman prods and Doyoung hides his smile in his coat when Hansol tilts his head a tiny bit and hums. He knows that play.

“We want to live there. I find, with the right incentives, pirates are very good at minding their own business.”

The woman clears her throat, her face a little red, and steps back into line with her fellow guards. They let them pass quietly after that, and getting past the check-point goes a lot smoother than he had anticipated. The soldiers manning the terminal might not know to look for anyone, or they are not very good at their job, but he had wisely decided to leave the cold gun behind in the bunker no matter how much he wanted to keep it. That would have been difficult to explain even to the most thick-headed soldier.

“Are you alright?” he whispers in Jaehyun’s ear once they are inside the terminal and waiting to board the shuttle. Jaehyun has been noticeably quiet all morning and every time Doyoung has looked at him, his face has been drawn with more than just exhaustion.

“When can you take that off?” Jaehyun asks instead of answering him. Though the question is a good enough answer on its own. It bothers him, probably as much as it bothers Doyoung.

“I don’t know. The safest would be to wait until we reach Runtah, but maybe on the shuttle will be good enough,” he whispers, pressing closer to make sure his words can’t be overheard. Jaehyun makes a weird, jerky movement, as if he wants to move away from Doyoung but at the same time not.

“It’s still me,” he whispers, though he knows it will make no difference. Jaehyun knows it’s him, but the face he looks into is not his. If Jaehyun didn’t already struggle with knowing his face, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad, but he can see his mind spin the longer they look into each other’s eyes.

 

He stays close to Jaehyun until he is settled into a corner seat on the space shuttle, covered in a thick blanket instead of the large, cumbersome jacket, and then decides it would be good to give him some space. At least until he stops looking like he is going to throw up his meager dinner. He sits down next to Hansol and watches him silently while he fusses over Donghyuk, tugging uselessly at the kid’s blanket and lifting an arm to wrap around his shoulders when Donghyuk tips sleepily into his side.

“How are you doing?” he asks once Donghyuk falls asleep, a spectacularly quick event. Hansol smiles and turns his head in the direction of Doyoung’s voice. It’s amazing how quickly he is adapting to his new situation.

“I’m still on painkillers so I feel perfectly fine right now,” he says, and Doyoung feels the corners of his mouth twitch at the humor still present in Hansol’s voice.

“That’s good, but not what I meant,” he mumbles.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Anyway, I think I’ve got some spare eyes lying around. They’re from a lizard, but I’m sure they’ll fit*,” Hansol jokes, but his smile falls at the aggravated sigh that leaves Doyoung’s lips.

“Doyoung, I came with you not expecting to survive. Now I’m going home, with Donghyuk, and you and Jaehyun, all of us alive. I would give more than my eyes for that.” His voice is soft, but strong and Hansol’s fingers wrap around his knee in a comforting grip.

“I don’t blame you, you know. He’s your other half, there’s a lot of things I would do for Johnny if I was pushed into a corner like you were.” He opens his mouth to refute that it’s not the same thing, Johnny is quite literally Hansol’s other half, but he’s not allowed to voice any of it.

“Romantic or platonic, a decade or less, none of that makes any difference when the love is that strong,” Hansol muses, sounding more like they are discussing a good book while drinking tea in the garden. He seems lighter than Doyoung has ever seen him.

“He’ll heal,” Hansol says after a lengthy silence, and Doyoung doesn’t need to see his vague gesture in Jaehyun’s approximate direction.

“I hope so,” he mumbles, eyes locked on Hansol’s cast hand still on his knee.

“He will, whether that means regaining his old memories or making new ones going forward,” Hansol sounds so sure Doyoung has to believe him.

“And me?” he asks in a moment of vulnerability.

Hansol doesn’t say anything for a long time. They sit on the uncomfortable seats in the container-like ship and watches the stars in the distance, spots of light in the otherwise all-consuming darkness of space.

“Do you want my advice?” Hansol says eventually. It’s not the reassurance he had wanted, but maybe advice is exactly what he needs.

“Don’t rush,” of course Hansol has already surmised what happened between him and Jaehyun. “Give him time to find himself again, and give yourself time to heal. Don’t become dependant on him to make you feel good.”

“But will I ever heal?” he finds himself needing an answer, some kind of certainty so the future doesn’t look as bleak. A broken mind he can learn to live with, but this state of unknowing, the complete detachment to feeling, is too heavy to bear.

“All wounds heal Doyoung, with the right medicine. You’ll never reach the point of no return as long as you don’t give up.”

Hansol turns his attention back on Donghyuk then, having said all he can say, and Doyoung moves back to sit next to Jaehyun. He needs the time afforded him on this long flight to Runtah to think, but he can feel his eyes grow heavy the moment he sits down with Jaehyun’s warmth pressed against his arm. Without meaning to his head slowly falls onto Jaehyun’s shoulder and Jaehyun, not asleep as he had thought, tucks his arm in Doyoung’s elbow and lays his cheek against his hair.

 

*

*  *  *

*

 

The sweltering heat of Runtah is at the same time welcomed and dreaded after the winter destruction of Taranjá. They land in Melos, the only other space port on Runtah other than the Ark, and Doyoung feels a heaviness settle in his spine at the memories the place brings forth. He looks at Jaehyun as they descend the ramp onto the cobblestone ground, wondering what he knows of the city they’ve landed in and if it sparks any recognition in the story Doyoung told him two nights before. It had been a long flight, and he and Jaehyun had spent most of it curled up together away from the rest, talking about miscellaneous things, but not touching on the subject of _them_. Even so, Doyoung is sure of what he means to do.

“Well, we’re here now,” Jaemin says once they are all standing in the town square just outside the port. All in all, Melos looks exactly like Thíva. A little dirtier, a little more worn, and instead of salty sea air all Doyoung can smell is piss and beer. But it’s not at all what he had expected. He can somewhat see the appeal, and for a second he wonders how long Ten lived here.

“Now, we go home. Thank you,” Donghyuk’s sincere voice overlaps the thoughts running through his head.

“I mean it, Jaemin. None of this would have been possible without you, thank you.” He can see Jaemin’s face melt from tight disbelief into something softer, making him look younger than Doyoung imagines he is. His hand is still linked with Jeno’s, Doyoung doesn’t think they ever let go. The thought has barely formed in his mind when his own hand is suddenly occupied, Jaehyun’s clammy fingers slipping into the spaces between his, and he looks at the man on his left. Sweat is trickling down the side of Jaehyun’s face and he looks about as uncomfortable as Doyoung feels. They need to get some more appropriate clothing before they set off on the long walk to Thíva.

“And? Where do _we_ go?” Jaemin asks, a lot calmer with Jeno’s hand rubbing his back and Donghyuk smiling warmly at him.

“To the third moon of Pámanda,” Donghyuk finally reveals, but Doyoung can see the confusion sinking into Jaemin’s eyes.

“And he will be there?” he asks, kicking restlessly at the cobblestone.

“I don’t know, that’s not how it works. I only know that you two go there,” Donghyuk shrugs, stepping back to stand next to Hansol who, after almost forty-eigth hours of rest, looks a lot better.

“The universe doesn’t work against us, if it shows me something then it has deemed it important enough to need sharing.”

They part ways soon after that, Jeno waving wildly at them until they disappear back into the cooled space port, and Doyoung frowns after them. If the universe didn’t work against them, it wouldn't send kids on the run into danger.

“Doyoung?” Jaehyun’s soft voice is like a balm to the soul, erasing any thoughts of kids and unfair circumstances from his mind. He is pulling at his fingers, a gentle tug only but it’s all he needs for Doyoung to follow.

“We want to leave right away, are you good with that?” Donghyuk asks, all but stomping his feet in excitement. Of course, he wants to go home.

“Let’s go,” he says, smiling at the exuberant kid, then at Hansol and finally at Jaehyun, glued to his side. “Let’s go home.”

 

Donghyuk and Hansol make up the lead, dressed in short-sleeved linen shirts and knee-long trousers with matching jackets wrapped around their waists. They had found a clothes store a little off the town square and Donghyuk had paid for a new outfit for all of them, something he had complained loudly about all the way to the mostly eroded city walls. It’s a days walk to Thíva at least, but Doyoung feels rejuvenated with more than just renewed energy. Jaehyun is still holding his hand, trusting Doyoung to lead the way while he looks around them at the planet he knows purely in a textbook manner, but still feels strangely attached to. Doyoung had told him in more detail the events leading to Ten’s death, wanting Jaehyun to have that defining moment not despite the hurt it caused him, but because of it. It made Jaehyun grow strong, and Doyoung hates that it was taken from him.

“Was it over there?” Jaehyun asks, pointing at a silhouetted mountain in the distance. Doyoung, with his better eyes, can see the craggy outline of the ancient Acropolis. He thinks about the Baptistery where Jaehyun laid Ten to rest, and the mimicry of one where he left Taeyong soaking in his own blood. Both bad people who were still held dear.

“Doyoung?” Jaehyun’s voice brings him back, his concerned face erasing the last haze from his mind.

“Yes,” he croaks, taking a deep breath to rid his chest of the weight pushing down on it.

“Jaehyun,” he tugs the other to a stop and Jaehyun grabs for his other hand as well, letting them hang between them. “I don’t want you to think this is a rejection in any way, but I think it would be a good idea to …” He can’t say it.

He knows it’s what would be best for the both of them, but there is a desperate need inside him to touch Jaehyun, and kiss him and love him and _make_ love to him, and it is so very hard to dismiss.

“I love you,” it’s true, “and I always will,” another truth, “but we both need to heal.” It’s the most roundabout way he could imagine saying it, but Jaehyun gets him either way.

“I want to know you,” he says. “I want to know _me_. I want to know why I love you.” Jaehyun’s smile outshines the sun and there is no need to put it in plainer words when their hearts speak to each other.

Their feet resume walking, putting the endless dirt road behind them with every step, leaving the past where it belongs as they make new memories in the Silver Waterfall and the aster fields that stretch all the way from Melos to Thíva. And when they can finally smell the sea in the air their tired feet grow lighter, Donghyuk’s laugh grows brighter and Jaehyun’s hand in his remains the same. He is home, and it will never leave again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *the lizard eyes, it's a direct quote from my favourite show and biggest scifi inspiration, Doctor Who (Season 10, Episode 5 "Oxygen"). Couldn't not do it.
> 
> AAAA it's over!!! To everyone who made it this far, and who has kept me going through solarflare and this with your kudos and comments and lovely reactions, thank you so much<3 I'm so grateful to every single one of you!
> 
> Love,  
> whenineternal
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/whenineternal)

**Author's Note:**

> *Gyðja is the female variant of goði or Gothi, a priest and chief in norse mythology. Used here as a religious figure only.
> 
> Hope you are enjoying it so far, next chapter will be up in 1 week!  
> 


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